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Ahona Das’s translation of Nabaneeta Deb Sen’s poem: মেঘ – Cloud (Bangla to English)

That girl, she wants to be a bird

Today thinks I'll be an eagle

Tomorrow thinks of being an Indus crane.


That girl, a very stubborn girl

Insists on the sea and sky

Her two wings she wills in both spaces


But which to touch first: water or air?

Thinking she herself becomes the ocean breeze

On the breast of breeze, herself the wave’s kiss of salt.


That girl, a very stubborn girl

In the end, she did persist

Girl became the cloud to the northeast.

A graduate student at the University of Chicago, Ahona is an ardent lover of all things fictional and believes after Ursula K. Le Guin that fiction is the carrier-bag of life or life-stories. When not found cribbing about her PhD, she can be found nose-deep into a story or at home in the company of friends.
Nabaneeta Deb Sen was an Indian writer and academic. After studying arts and comparative literature, she moved to the United States of America where she studied further. She returned to India and taught at several universities and institutes as well as serving in various positions in literary institutes. She published more than 80 books in Bengali: poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children’s literature. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2000 and the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999.

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