Durbhikkha

1. Famine

1.1.

What travails you do gift us, O lord, God of wants, what travails …
O, in 1176, that dread year of famine,
How did we survive such woes, O?
What travails you do gift us, O lord, God of wants, what travails …
O, every year with flood or drought, how do your subjects live,
Our rulers of Indian lands, O?
What travails you do gift us, O lord, God of wants, what travails …
O, families arrive, far and wide, no telling friend from foe,
That’s our blighted fortune now, O.
What travails you do gift us, O lord, God of wants, what travails …
O, we pick the stalks of the water lily to boil and eat,
Fight over them at meals, in every home, O.
What travails you do gift us, O lord, God of wants, what travails …
O, when we have little to eat, and buy grain at such price,
How do we keep breath, body, and soul, O?
What travails you do gift us, O lord, God of wants, what travails …
O, with pangs of hunger struck, no morsel of rice, at wit’s end,
We do remain alive in death, O.
What travails you do gift us, O lord, God of wants, what travails …
O, moneylenders demand their dues, with beatings and abuse,
How do we bear this gift of pain, O?

This text is an English-language translation of the original version:
Original

This is a selection from the original text

Keywords

famine, food, hunger, natural dye, oral narrative, patachitra, scroll, starvation

Source text

Title: Durbhikkha

Author: Dukhushyam Chitrakar

Editor(s): Sujit Mondal, Ayesha Mukherjee

Publisher: University of Exeter

Publication date: 2021

Place of publication: Exeter

Digital edition

Original author(s): Dukhushyam Chitrakar

Language: Bengali, English

Responsibility:

Texts collected by: Ayesha Mukherjee, Sujit Mondal

Texts transcribed by: Sujit Mondal

Texts translated by: Ayesha Mukherjee

Texts encoded by: Shrutakirti Dutta

Encoding checking by: Charlotte Tupman

Genre: India > poetry

For more information about the project, contact Dr Ayesha Mukherjee at the University of Exeter.

Acknowledgements