What are they doing in the ditch?
Are they admiring themselves?
Or are they skinning and washing jute?
In this plastic age, who tells them to cultivate jute?
Are they abandoned by their Chennai-bound brothers?
Or are they tied to their traditional harvesting?
Is the yield good or bad?
How is the market this year?
Will they make a profit out of their labour?
I don’t know, as there is no news
Of cultivating, cutting, retting jute
In the newspaper or newsroom.
Abandoned people, abandoned hopes,
The cost of fertilizer and pesticides multiplied,
Beels are dry, but they will sow jute again.
They are not bonded labourers, I know.
But, are they free?
