The Potrait Of Hunger Poem by Umakanta Rout

Driven by grinding hunger'
I discovered the way
that inclined gently to your city.
I felt a pervasive foul smell
in the surrounding air'
with the hide and seek
of red-green light
and the shadowy dark.
Both the sides of the street'
with the Fortune Tower
standing sentinel over the street'
resplendent in the brilliant beauty
of the bunches of golmohurs
adorning the wayside street
like stars studding the sky.

Someone on the dimly-lit balcony
of a five-star hotel
beckoned me with a wave of a hand
to sneak on the stairs.
'Prostrate with hunger?
Do come over here.
Here is the hunger awaiting you'.

I was at my wit's end in stunned silence.

Before I fathomed out
what the person could mean from my appearance,
a feeling of hunger started chasing my being
like a reptile.
Finally, I was held a hostage
to its clutches unwittingly.

Unable to put up with the hunger pangs'
I started caressing my hungry stomach'
but felt startled with its hot breath:

'No, not here,
look below your abdomen.
I fell unconscious at the spot.

After I regained my senses'
a tall', hefty, muscled oldman,
extending his wooden staff to my hand,
was heard telling me '
You hunger after the object of your hunger?
Come with me. I shall lead you to the place'

When I opened my eyes,
I discovered myself
in a familiar place:
it was perhaps Kalahandi or Kasinathpur.

(N.B; Kalahandi & Kashinathapu are two remote tribal places of the state of Odisha in India, where people die of starvation and are deprived if minimum common requirements for survival)