The Melancholic Afternoon Original: Assamese: Gayayriphukan Translation: Bibekananda Choudhury Poem by Gayatri Phukan

She is squatting with a red sky of gulmohar over her head
Her soiled breasts are peeping through the torn blouse and slipped aanchal
A newborn doll she presses hard on her bosom
As if a game of doll will be played now with friends
So Kunti from the epic is an unfamiliar name for her
She does not understand the inhuman world
Whose long fangs can bite away rotten flesh and heart of babies
And may copulate with corpse
Their demonic nails are not trimmed
Teeth are not broken
All words against those remain a slogan
In the world of people.

She is smiling now and then
Cursing someone
Picking up and gorging on some food swarmed with flies
And sticking in the dried nipples of her breasts in the mouth of her baby
The pedestrians are stopping and looking on and then went by
Perhaps the one reaching the height of insanity
Embracing her body in the darkness of the night
Is also one of them

The naughty children are teasing her
She is worried
If they snatch her heart's treasure
Just watch
How the baby is howling

Look going a little further
The Radhas and Krishnas are sitting in rows
An afternoon
Melancholic with songs of transforming age
In the love-lovelessness of human-inhuman is hanging
On the yellow branch of that Sonaru.