My Village

a poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

My village
Awkward blunt people’s village
Foolish, uneducated people’s village
Foolish, uneducated people’s village
Foolish, uneducated and rustics’ villain
Where people seem to be religious and cultured
But are not not cultured
Whose work is to do politics, to belittle you
To do trickery and cleverness
Is to capture the widows’ and the weak’s property

My village, a small village
A village of the fools, lathimen
A small upland mound
Where there lie in mud houses
Somehow built
Without anybody reading therein, writing
Just will like to beat-thrash
Quarrel their job
This man’s land will be captured
That man’ land

Will go to court, indulging in sub-judice matters
Will get involved in heavy litigation
Will trap, torture
Keeping a lathi in hand
Wearing a headgear and sporting a tikki
Appearing to be cultured, but is not
Into the small-small things
And dirty politics is he absorbed in

My village,
A small village as thus
Where there is nothing
Neither the market nor anything
Neither the shops nor places for outings
Just eat and sleep somehow
Burn you the hearth with leaves and logs
And live you as a farm-man and a farmer

My village awkward, blunt people’s village
Fools’ village
Fools not, great fools’ village
Uneducated and illiterates’ village
Where lesser the people to read
Dirty politics doers many
Capturing, seizing fellows now much in number
What to do with norm, rule-duty
Leaving God-Wud
All busy with or after their source of income

My village blunt lathimen-swains’ village
Fools’ village
Illiterate, uneducated people’s village
Not of the readers, the educated
Illiterates’ village
Uneducated-rustics’ village
Uncultured, blind and superstitious people’s village
Small-small people’s village
Small-small nomenclature and protocol-holding people’
My village!