It was August 6th…
A dirty brown sky
Neither sunny nor rainy
Body bathes in sweat.

A crowded bus from Cuttack to Puri
Elbows of girls’
With protruding bosoms
Nub you gently.

Does anyone search for old friends at midday?
A lock on every door
A different sorrow…
In each helplessly lonely house.

Laxmisagar,
A vain search for auto-rickshaw
The town bus from Kalpana square doesn’t come here
My feet, well acquainted,
To the roads they move,
Mausima Mandir, BJB College,
Unit 9 and the busy crowd of Unit 6.

Lonely in Midday Bhubaneswar
Cumbersome Govt. files
Snail through the Secretariat;
Tasteless sinful people
Churn out Orders.
Big mansions
On both sides of the road.
A pretentious world of busy people
Yet the nation advances
With Cars
And an inflated middle-class ego.

We are all men of the footpath
Torn clothes and bundles
Or, like me today,
An unsung bag, the identity
Of a man wretched and defeated.

Midday Bhubaneswar…
Ungrateful love, ungrateful people.

(Translated from Oriya by Sharat Chander)