Our Rural Scape Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

The children of poverty, malnutrition, underdevelopment,
The tales of
Hunger, scarcity, shortage,
Lack of resources,
Food problem, water problem, house problem,
Where to live, where to sleep,
What to eat,
How to put it before
And present it?

The rural space agrarian and agricultural,
People living in the shanty,
Hutments and mud houses,
Under straw and bamboo-thatched roofs
Leaking badly during the rains,
The rags to sleep on the date-leaf mats
Spread over the floor
Without light, just the oil lamp to show it light
Sometimes when burnt through the embers of the ashes
Of the hearth extinguishing.

No talk of education and morning time breakfast,
The stale food is enough and that too if it remains,
The crows too in competition with the hungry children
Crying for food to be sufficed and playing with,
But crows slyly looking for a break to lift
From the bowl of the children and it trying to divert
The wily creatures whisking away,
Go to the river, take a bath and worship you at midday
To the mid day meal in the afternoon.

Just the rice gruel and a fistful of boiled rice or stale rice
The morning time breakfast with a chilly and a pinch of salt,
The bamboo cot woven with the jute rope,
Paddy straw bed as for warm up during the chill winter,
No bathrooms, no toilets, live you taking the name of God,
Nothing to talk of science and development,
Inaction, lethargy, superstition, witchcraft,
Quarrel, brawl, altercation, litigation, their things.