THE GIRL’S PLIGHT
Plight, like her own shadow, follows a girl forever.
Like
the uncalled for anxieties of the parents
And
the irresistible excitement of first love
Plight
accompanies her forever,
Still, a girl doesn't cease to dream beautiful dreams
Sitting
inside a chamber of melancholy…..!
What
else can she do expect playing with her own unruly mind?
The girl enters the kitchen to get drenched with her sweats
She
spends sleepless nights beside the bed of a patient
While
working in the office, she curses her own fate
She
wipes the school blackboard with her tears
She
tries to lighten the workloads of the whole day with a deep sigh......
Again
while returning home she picks plight from the way
Along
with her old, torn and wretched slippers…….!
The girl dreams and consoles her mind
She tries
her utmost to drive away her plight
She
releases her plight on the pages of the half read novel
She
leaves the alphabet of her plight on the type writer
She
locks her plight in the office drawers
She
throws away her plight through the school window
She
removes the plight thru her feet with her musical anklets
In
the kitchen, she covers it inside the cooking tub,
But,
alas, before she retires to bed at night,
She
is awaited there by the inseparable, sadistic plight much earlier…..!
The
expected man in the novel doesn’t turn up
But,
eventually, the lady accepts an undesirable and unwelcome visitor
She
steps into the house of the unknown person to toil
She
then finds herself in his kitchen, on his couch and at the sick bed
Again
at the end of the day she puts her forehead on the table like Naivedya
She starts
dreaming, counting the days and mingling others’ plight
With
the tears of her own inexplicable and inalienable plight…..!
Copyright: Dr. Shankar D Mishra, Sr.
lecturer in English, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India 04.05.2023
N.B. – The above poem is translated from an Odia poem “ଝିଅଟିର ଦୁଃଖ” / “The Girl's Plight” composed by J. P Das, Odisha.
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