Translated from the Bihar-Hindi to the English by Mridula Nath Chakraborty
Ran the gamut of love talk from their side
Even as they kept sowing hatred in the soil
Inside Outside Ceaseless
They nurtured hatreds one-sidedly
We could not reach them one bit
Whether we extend love towards them or hate?
It was all always already decided by them
Nothing from our end at all!
They were our judge all the while our transgressors too
Where lies our potential to hate?
We remain but just duty-bound
To respond on their hatreds
Musafir Baitha is an award-winning Hindi author. He was born in 1968 to a landless Kabirpanthi Dalit family in Bihar’s Sitamarhi district. After completing schooling there, he earned a PhD in Hindi literature from Patna University. His publications include stories, articles, and translations, as well as his 2011 poetry collection
Bimaar maanas ka geh. He has been awarded the Emerging Writer Award from the Bihar Rashtrabhasha Parishad and the Dr Ambedkar Fellowship from the Indian Dalit Literary Academy (New Delhi).
Mridula Nath Chakraborty has edited
Being Bengali: at home and in the world, an enquiry into the intellectual history of this linguistic group from Bangladesh and India (Routledge 2014). She is the co-editor of
Abohelaar Bhangon Naame Booke / Broken by Neglect, a bilingual edition of Nunga poet Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poetry from English to Bengali (2014) and
A Treasury of Bangla Stories (1997). Most recently, she has convened high-impact projects in literary-cultural diplomacy between Australia and India, such as
Australia-India Literatures International Forum (Sydney 2013), the
Autumn School in Literary Translation (Kolkata 2013) and
Literary Commons: Writing Australia-India in the Asian Century with Indigenous, Dalit and Multilingual Tongues (2014-2016).
