Laborers In The Gulf (A Poem From My Poem Book - Come To Our Goa) Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

How can you get yourself scorched in the hot sun
and keep wiping the perspiration from your forehead
while back home in the summers
you would relax on a chaarpai
under the shade of the big banyan tree sipping cold lassi.
How could you let your illiteracy take you to a gulf country
and out there you work as a laborer at a construction site
just because you could not afford to learn to read or write
and just because your father did not send you to school?
How can you stand on that scaffolding so high
and keep getting weary as you thirst for water
while your children talk praises of you to their friends
and think of you as their cleverest father.
How could you let your aspirations overtake your fatigue
while you chose to toil out there and bear those hardships?
How will you retain your energy after all the slogging you do
to carry home your hard-earned money and savings?
How homesick you must be feeling
after all those years of labor?
Now, go home my brother never to return,
eat the pulses sown by your brethren and regain your vigor;
the joy of the poor is not in just chasing rainbows of desires
but in living a life that's not over-bearing.