Poems of Bibhas Roy Chowdhury

Rabindranath writes, “They Work”,

By this he means to say

The kings and the great kings die,

But the labors never die.

In India today Rabindranath is

A useless name,

As the ministers think

They are themselves poets.

In India today the labors are,

In fact, cheap slaves

Who have no country of their own.

In search of the babus

The labors travel

All around India.

The book called The Constitution

Reads—in India there are

Neither babus nor servants,

But Indians.

Democracy is now

The pet pigeon of the babu families.

(The babus change, but the house

 Full with pigeons

                 Remains the very same)

Democracy is now

The shameless hunger

In the servants’ houses.

(And in this case,

Neither the servants

Nor the hunger changes at all)

They, to whom my words hurt,

Can curse me as much as they can

But, in return, they must answer this—

In search of the babus, 

Can the labors travel

All around this country or not?

I suppose they can.

If so, why on earth does the country

Call them migrants

During their helpless homecoming?

Let Indian babus answer this.

Let Indian media answer this.

Tell me, how come the labors

Are migrants who yearn

To return home

With their woman and children,

With loads in their heads,

After getting kicked off

                by the owners,

Being hungry and mutilated?

Look, each comment has its

Own counter-comment.

Whenever you say migratory labors,

I’ll say you back

The migratory President,

Or the migratory Prime Minister,

Or rather the goddamn

Migratory ministers, the bad eggs.

There’s a limit to humiliation, O India!

A day will come when

They won’t work anymore

In cities or in ports

Despite being hailed

By thousands of Rabindranath

In their poems,

And then The Constitution itself

Will run to them,

Bow down to their feet

And say with folded hands—

“Save me! I am yours…

I’m only for you!”