Heaps of welfare policies remain on the A-4 size paper yet under your nose, millions die no artist can portray the colour of hunger. Neither any writer nor any camera can capture the live picture of hunger the fire of hunger smoulders in the belly neither water nor salt can extinguish it at last, life flies away, phurr, just done! If you are still chest-thumping singing and delivering lectures in pride over the tattered map of the nation then I don't have to tell anything. Translated from the Odia by Pitambar Naik
The Tattered Map of the Nation
Jayadratha Suna, trans. by Pitambar Naik
Jayadratha Suna started writing in 1997. He has two collections of poetry in Odia—-Shosha and Niandhara (Pashchima). He has been conferred with the Kendra Sahitya Akadenmi Yuva Puraskar in 2018, Kalahandi Yuva Puraskar and many more. He has two master's degrees and a degree in teaching. He teaches in Pragati College, Bhawanipatna. He grew up in Kalahandi, Odisha in India.
Pitambar Naik is an advertising professional. His work appears or is forthcoming in The McNeese Review, The Notre Dame Review, Packingtown Review, Rise Up Review, Ghost City Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Indian Quarterly, and elsewhere. The Anatomy of Solitude (Hawakal) is his debut book of poetry. He grew up in Odisha and lives in Bangalore, India.