Editor’s Note
We have authors. We have poems. We have translators. We have translated poems. Then we have editors who mediate this four-way relationship. Labelling the final narrative can get quite tricky. That is the situation here. Prabhat writes Hindi poems. Matt Reeck has made a habit of translating them into English. Matt felt his conversations with Prabhat (in Hindi) were of independent interest and we agreed. The resulting narrative is Matt’s translation of the conversation which also includes his translations of Prabhat’s poetry. Clear? Whew. Enjoy.
—Editors, Translations Team (Poetry)
The Bombay Literary Magazine
I spent three days in Sawai Madhopur, from 26-28 July 2025, speaking to the Hindi poet Prabhat. This interview and translation format is a reconstruction of our conversations in Hindi. I encountered his poetry for the first time the previous year when I had bought his second collection Our Days [jivan ke din] in Delhi. Looking back in my emails, I found that his poetry had been recommended to me as far back as 2011, when I was publishing my Hindi poetry and translations in Giriraj Kiradoo’s magazine Pratilipi. Prabhat was translated for the first time that year in a collection called Home from a Distance, published by Pratilipi.
I’d never been to Madhopur, although I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Rajasthan. When I was in college, I traveled alone in India. I stayed for a month and a half in Udaipur. Then, in my later twenties, when I was studying at the American Institute of Indian Studies Hindi program, I spent a summer season in Udaipur again. I have good memories of Rajasthan, so I was happy to have the time to meet him and to see a new place. His house ended up being on the southeastern tip of the town, a fair distance from where my hotel was on Ranthambore Road amid the strip of hotels—and almost exclusively hotels—that approaches the “Sanctuary,” as everyone calls it: the Ranthambore Tiger Preserve. My rickshaw driver explained to me that the word “ranthambore” is composed of three parts: “ran” means fighting; “tham” means a wide ditch, like you would use to fortify your castle; and “bore” means “dawn.” In short, the fort grew to be called this because there had been a long siege on the fort where the fighting was done in the ditch that served as a fortification and victory was sealed in the morning. True or not, I don’t know!
From his house’s roof, I could see the cliffs of Ranthambore Preserve park, which seemed so close I might even be able to touch them! Because it was the rainy season, small waterfalls were falling from the cliffs in places. Prabhat agreed that without the healthy tourism industry, the town wouldn’t exist in the way that it does now, a thriving small city, a qasba, where the roads are still wide and open, and the crowds of the cities don’t exist.
Prabhat welcomed me into his house. Sunita, his wife, who is an artist, was also a part of our conversations. Her work as a manda artist and illustrator deserves its own space. The couple has two children: Khushi, their daughter, is an MA art student in Shantiniketan, and Neel, their son, plays cricket and studies in Jaipur.
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MSR: The first thing I wanted to ask you about is your poetry. Sometimes it reminds me of songs. Would you say that?
P: Not songs, really. But I would say it has melody. There’s a melody to it. A rhythm.
MSR: And when you write about local culture, would you accept the label of folk poet [lok kavi]?
P: In my book on Dhavale, I call him a folk poet. When I sing, I sing in Maad Bhasha (माड़). So then I’m a folk poet too. So when I write, you could call me that, too.
MSR: Is the fact that you’re a part of the Meena community part of the reason why you chose a one-word penname?
P: Years ago, I used to use my given name, Natu Singh Meena. But I changed my name when I started getting published. But it wasn’t to hide my identity. Nothing like that.
MSR: Can you explain more about how you started to sing a folk singer?
P: In my village, my grandfather and father were part of the folk singing culture. I’m a folk singer too. I have a youtube channel [Banjara Namak Laya] where I document folk singing, and where I sing too. And I’ve written a biography that collects all the songs of the folk singer Dhavale Ram Meena, he’s a member of the Meena community, too. He sings in Jagrauti.
MSR: I want to ask you two questions about that: about your village and being a part of the Meena community. What’s the name of your village?
P: Raysana Gao. It’s 40 kilometers from Gangapur City.
MSR: I passed through Gangapur City on the train coming here from Dehradun.
P: It’s not far from there. My relatives still live there, my father supervises the fields, but others do the work. There are two harvests throughout the year. In the rainy season, buckwheat, corn, sorghum, oilseeds and peanuts. Then in the winter, mustard, chickpeas, peas, and wheat.
MSR: When I found out that you were part of the Meena community, I had to google how they are different from the Bhil. How are the two different?
P: Meenas live in northern Rajasthan, and they are somewhat developed, somewhat more integrated into society. Bhils live in the forests of southern Rajasthan, around Udaipur and Pratapgarh. So even though they were once one, little by little, it started to be recognized that their conditions were different, and so they were categorized differently.
MSR: And your book on Dhavale, it’s a biography?
P: Yes, it’s a biography, but it’s also an archive. I followed him where he sang, and I wrote down all the songs he sang.
MSR: He would never have written them down? They were songs he learned from his father and grandfather and so on?
P: He learned them in the village, but not necessarily from his dad and granddad. Some are traditional ones, and some are ones he made up.
MSR: That sounds like amazing work. Of course, I’m curious, knowing what I know about book publishing: who paid for it?
P: I was having a hard time finding a publisher, so through a friend I learned of the Raza Foundation. They didn’t pay me, but they found me a publisher, Setu Prakshan. They’re set to pay me royalties for the first time in August, three years since the book was published.[1]
MSR: Could you tell me a little about your family, your heritage?
P: My grandfather was a farmer. He was illiterate. My father was the first person in his village to finish the 10th grade. Then, many people my age started to go to college.
MSR: Where did you go?
P: I have an MA in Hindi literature from Jaipur National University.
MSR: After getting your degree, what did you do?
P: Most people from my background who finish school, who have my qualifications, want to join government service.
MSR: IAS or ICS?
P: Not really that. Anything. Being a teacher in a government school, working in the post office. But I thought I should really do something with my education. Actually, though, at first, after college, even though I could have got a lectureship at a university, I went back, Sunita, my wife, and I did, to my village to farm for two years. My family said I was crazy. Everyone said I was crazy. At the same time, I taught kids for two years in the village. They needed a teacher, and I did it for free. But then I chose a different path. We left to go back to Jaipur. I started writing children’s books, and doing workshops for children—education and writing workshops. Basically, since then I’ve been a freelancer.
MSR: So you have written more children’s books than poetry?
P: I’ve written thirty children’s books. For my poetry, I have only three collections. The first one from Sahitya Akademi in 2014, then the Rajkamal book last year, and this August will be my third. It will be published by Three Essay Collective, by the poet Asad Zaidi in Gurgaon.
MSR: For the children’s books, how does the publishing of them work: Do you have an idea and you approach a publisher, and they find the illustrator?
P: It works in all different ways. I’ve been the editor of Savari Gari [Passenger Car], it’s a children’s literature magazine. This publication is based on my writing workshops with kids. Kids contribute. They are from six- to fourteen-year-olds. I do writing workshops in one hundred public schools in Kota and Madhopur. Actually, I can’t get to all the schools, so I train others as well. This is one of my education workshops I have led. And the students provide the writing and illustrations. But people know I do this, and they contact me about writing for them. I have a good relationship with Susheel Shukla, who is the head of Ektara, in Bhopal, the children’s book publisher. So work finds me from Ektara, too. I’ve also been the editor of Kau [कउ], which only had four issues, unfortunately; that was about the Meena community folk singers. A kau is a little fire dug in ground to keep hands warm in the winter. But I’ve traveled outside of Rajasthan to do workshops. To everywhere in North India, basically: Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Bihar, Jharkhand, MP, UP … Chhattisgarh. Sometimes it’s a state agency that wants me to come, sometimes it’s an NGO, based in Delhi, Jaipur, or abroad.
MSR: Do you always know the illustrator for your children’s books?
P: Sunita sometimes illustrates. And sometimes I am in touch with the illustrator. Usually, I’m not. I might know them, or know their name, but I’m not directly in touch with them about matching words and images.
MSR: And how do you come up with the ideas?
P: It’s different ways. For instance, Khana. I was at a writing workshop in Delhi, and the prompt was to come up with something based on one word. So I thought of khana, and all the different ways that the word is used in Hindi. As part of compound words for different sorts of places and food, basically. So everything from junkstore [kabadkhana] to Punjabi food [Panjabi khana].
MSR: That’s a great idea. It’s very clever.
MSR: Getting back to your poetry, I would say for me there’s a strong sense of Rajasthan in your poems. What’s fascinating to me in contemporary Hindi poetry is the great range of aesthetics and flavors [ras]. There’s you in Rajasthan, and then, for instance, there are Hindi writers in Jharkand hundreds or thousands of miles away. Is it intentional that your poems give a strong sense of place? Do you think of yourself as a Rajasthani poet first, and a Hindi poet second, or the other way around, or neither?
P: I’m a Hindi poet because I write in Hindi. My subject matter comes where I’m from. You start from where you’re from. But I’m not just a Rajasthani poet. I write against those things that are wrong. Against the suffering of people everywhere.
MSR: Yes, it’s true that many of your poems have suffering in them. Like the poem about your mom, “Carrying Cow Dung” (2008).
because the stories of the women
only go so far
I wonder what it was
that made my mom do it
was it because of anemia
that she couldn’t even get up on her own
when she bent down to pick up the fresh cow dung
I was on hands and knees trailing her through the dung and piss
of the livestock pen
I was crying and the men of the village were sitting smoking their hookahs
the water buffalo piss was all over me
when she went to make dung patties I followed right behind her long skirt
she had to work fast and I couldn’t keep up
or did one of the men of the family whip her with a rope
saying she was going to be late getting to the fields for no reason
what in the end actually happened the women won’t say
they say—when you were one and a half
your mom got mad and threw the whole wet mess of cow dung on you
they told me this many times
when once would have been enough
there was something cruel in their story
they were insulting my mom
because that twenty-three-year-old woman was no longer in this world
to counter their nonsense
one by one all three of her previous kids died
and she had to take them to bury them in the burial grounds
so how could she have thrown
a heaping mess of cow dung on her only living child
but if she had
just imagine how it would have
tortured her mentally
and in those dire straits still
there was fight left in her
and despite everything something inside her spoke to her
her natural maternal love
and her picked me up out of the cow dung and brought me to her chest
to feed me milk from her breast so that I might live forever
the traces of my mom’s kisses remain even now on my cheeks
I can still see the water that my mother used to bathe me
I can still smell her dirty clothes that I slept in so peacefully
these scenes are so many and so full of maternal love and affection
that I could write about them my whole life and nothing else
when I have a fever her tears fall onto my forehead
by the time I was three she was dead
she had gone to be with her three dead children
who must never have imagined that one day
their mom might follow them to where they were
but a mother never forgets her children
whether they’re dead or alive
now because she lacks a mind
she must never have realized
that she’ll never be able to return to get me
MSR: It’s so sad.
P: That’s the world I came from. It’s all true.
MSR: I guess that it’s also true makes it even sadder.
my cousin was poor
her wedding was never properly celebrated
she was sent off
with some women singing
and that was it
after her marriage the words of the wedding songs
had lost their luster
the happiness of the traditional songs was gone forever
her husband murdered a criminal
he went to sit in the throngs of cursed prisoners in Indian jails
held without bail
hearings delayed day after day
she wasn’t allowed to stay at her in-laws’ house
even though her son was sitting on her lap
the poor thing came here
a stone shed was offered for her to stay in
she found odd jobs to feed herself and the baby in her womb
that’s how my poor cousin’s son grew up
soon he turned seven years old
she took such good care of the boy
she sent him off to study
he spent the day penned in at the poor school
then came home and played with friends
one day while he was playing
someone plucked him up like a hen’s chick
it’s painful to write this
how she knocked on doors and bowed at the feet of
the police the village council head and assembly members
even gods and goddesses
and all that is left for us to wonder is
who would abduct a child playing in the street
someone afflicted by poverty hunger or ignorance
was the child sacrificed in some remote place to some god
or was the child stuffed full of food and sold to some barbarous race
was the boy sold to an Arab to be a camel jockey dead before long
or sold to some newfangled holy man or tourist
or served up like meat on a platter
so many kids go missing each year
but people care less about them
than electricity being cut or taps running dry
in under three months a missing child is forgotten
since the day her son went missing
my cousin has been missing too
she didn’t know how to live
with a son who might be dead or alive
she didn’t know how to keep alive the memory of a child
who might be in this world or not
how to put him to sleep
how to wake him up
how to explain to him to be more careful
how to scold him when he was careless
if his organs haven’t been harvested
and transplanted into waiting bodies
if he has now been set free by child sexual abusers
if slapped on his ass like a slave
he is being bought and sold over and over again
if so where is he now and what is he doing
what would he look like now after so many years
has he already tried eating an Iodex sandwich
is he already a monster in the eyes of all the girls in the world
has he left to go shatter the streetlights in some big city
has he left to go cut telephone lines
has he set off a bomb in a crowded market
is he bound with rope
has he dragged his broken body to the courtroom
has he been hung in jail
has he fulfilled the destiny of ashes to ashes dust to dust
two generations back
my cousin and I have the same parentage
if you go one more generation back
our whole community we all share the same parentage
in the end all of us on Earth have the same parents
if you think like this
then no one is a stranger
no one an outcast
everyone is part of the same community there is no enemy
but in reality
our enemies are everywhere
I see
my cousin’s dirty hands and feet peek out from inside her clothing
her pitch-black hair looks out
her eyes glisten with compassion for the deer that has been shot
and sometimes I ask her —
cousin where on earth did you get such drab clothes
did you bring them back from the white stars in the heavens
you’re crazy —
she says then laughs
my cousin unvanquished
in the monsoon day’s last rays of sunlight
the woman is hard to make out
she has disappeared into the guar harvest field
now she reappears on the field embankment where she places the fodder
then ties it in a bundle
the sky has taken in all the moisture from the humid earth
wet heat leaks from the tight-wrapped clouds
her body is coated in sweat
with her sickle she swipes at the monsoon night moths
jackals are calling
she starts to worry where they are
there’s no one to help her
even the day’s last bird has retreated
to its nest to care for its eggs
she leaves her job half-finished on the embankment
and briskly starts out for home
the sweat has reached her ankles
grasshoppers stick to her arms and her lungari shawl
no one at home has missed her
some are eating
some are smoking
they turn when they smell her scent
sitting on the cot her kids start to cry
she pours water into a flat pan
to wash herself quickly
in front of our house there was an acacia tree
everyone had noticed
it wasn’t sprouting new branches or leaves anymore
every morning we looked at its permanent black bark
but no one did more than glance at it
perhaps because no one had any idea about how to use it
perhaps none of us was gifted in that way
to look at a tree and imagine what its uses might be
then a summer storm came one night
and everyone fled from the mud house front yard and livestock pen
to a brick and concrete house far away
in the night the storm woke us
we went to drink from the water pitcher
then listened as the storm brought down trees
we heard them snap in two
we thought the acacia tree in front of our house must have fallen down too
but when my aunt left in the hours before dawn
to go make yogurt
she went to the cow pen and her eyes fell directly on the acacia tree
which was still standing there
looking like an exhausted steer trying to keep its eyes open
what my aunt must have thought while looking at the tree
isn’t known to anyone
but it hadn’t buckled in the storm
that much was obvious
if no one could figure out how
then the years wore on
and it became clear to the acacia tree if to no one else
that the coming summer would be its last
there would be no second summer
for it to stand looking like an exhausted steer trying to keep its eyes open
then it was winter
there was little work to do in the fields
the farmers took up other small tasks
my father showed the tree to the village carpenter
he asked whether they could at least get a bed out of it
I didn’t hear what the answer was
I didn’t really care about it one way or another
but it wasn’t cut down
it stood there looking as exhausted
as a steer trying to keep its eyes open
then years later at ten in the morning one day
when some of us were eating
and others were going somewhere
I can’t recall what season it was
the end of the rainy season
or the beginning of winter
in any event it was a good month for dying
all seasons are good for births
and all seasons are fit for death
whatever season it was I remember
the hot sunlight on the black bark of the tree
not one leaf on any of the nearby trees moved
then suddenly the tree fell over
the tree was no longer
those of us who were eating looked up for a second
with a bite of food on our lips
those leaving the house stopped for a second
to look back before going on
showing no sign of emotion
just like the acacia died
showing no sign of emotion
NOTES:
[1] Prabhat, Dhavale: pad gayan parampara aur lok kavi dhavale par kendrit. Setu Prakshan, 2022. 500 pages, ISBN 9 789395 160704.
Acknowledgements
Image credits: © J. Sultan Ali. Untitled (1961). Dimensions: 28.7 X 39.0 in. / 72.9 X 99.1 cm. Medium: Oil on plywood.
Translator | Matt Reeck
Matt Reeck’s translations of Hindi poetry have been published by World Poetry Books (What of the Earth Was Saved, by Leeladhar Jagoori) and in the magazines Exchanges, International Poetry Review, Asymptote, Suspect, and more is forthcoming in Wasafiri. Recent Urdu translations from Manto and Khalid Javed were featured in the Granta India issue. A Portrait of the West, his translation of a 1924 Urdu travelogue by Qazi Abdul Ghaffar, will be published by Penguin India in 2026. [Text source: Matt Reeck]
Author | Prabhat
Prabhat is a leading Hindi poet living in Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan. He has published three collections, most recently Abke marange to badli banenge (After Death We Become Clouds, Three Essays Collective, 2025). He is also a noted children’s book author and creative arts and writing educator. [Text source: Matt Reeck]
