To My Miss...

Clapping-clapping, hey, hey!

Uncle comes riding a horse

Aunty comes on a litter

Brings the sweet cony ice-cream

How tasty this milky meal!

Clapping-clapping, hey, hey!

Miss,

I can't sing this song

Don't insist on,

Rather make me a cock,

Make me stand on a single leg on the bench,

Hit with the thin stick making weal on my hand.

Miss,

When I try to sing this song, my vocal stops,

I feel giddy like the spinning earth,

I envision a house-like house without any roof in my eyes,

I envision the face of my relative made lean and thin by poverty,

And envision the sieve-like life perforated by infinite scarcity.

Miss,

Why do you teach us

This fake song?

My maternal uncle

Incessantly carrying the load like a donkey,

Never finding the bower of life,

Flowing the current of sweat heavily,

And even after seeing him walking up the marshy field

How can I hurt that sorrowful heart?

How can I sing the song of insult?

Uttering 'uncle comes riding a horse

This fake song,

The song of the rich, of the mansion.

My maternal aunt

Her lean and thin body remains busy round-the-clock

Carrying the load heavier than herself

Keeps walking around the clock,

Fallen down swooning from time to time

I also have seen

Did she ever get an opportunity to be carried on a palanquin?

It is hard for her to support even her own vital air

Then how can she bring 'sweets' for us?

I don't sing, miss,

The fake song,

The song of the satiated.

Miss,

I don't want to undergo

The scarcity, trouble and oppression of my ancestors

Rather I want to live to be a man-like man

This is why have I come to this sacred temple of knowledge.

Miss,

You can teach instead-

What should be done to be free from being the ploughman

Generation by generation for a long time living at the home of the merchant?

With the medicine working in the circus, the sister adds to the longevity of the mother

What should be done to fetch her to this school?

And what should be done to survive being a man-like man?

Rather tell-

Who erected this discriminating wall between the poor and the rich?

Why can't the debt of the money-lender be paid off for many generations?

Why is it ever dark in our lives?

You rather make me sing-

The song of our own grief

The poem of tears, the tune of pain.

But miss,

Don't make me sing this song

Don't insist on

Rather make me a cock,

Make me stand on a single leg on the bench,

Hit with the thin stick making weal on my hand.

Happily, can I accept these tortures

But can't sing

This fake song.