Bhojpuri Descant

After Ghagha

I

Piss after dinner,

Sleep on your left side:

You’ll never be sick.

II

If landlords are saints,

Pestles are bowstrings.

III

Witty landlords,

Wheezy thieves:

Lynch them.

IV

A servant who knows

The secrets of the house,

A pretty wife,

Spetched clothes,

A wicked king:

They need careful handling.

V

A shoe that pinches,

A sharp-tongued wife,

The first-born a daughter,

An unproductive farm,

An idiot brother:

They cause endless grief.

VI

A brown she-elephant,

A bald wife,

Rain in winter:

Signs of luck.

VII

Three oxen, two wives:

Trouble’s at your doorstep.

VIII

A spendthrift son,

A cross-eyed buffalo,

A moody ox:

Get rid of them at once.

IX

An ox with six teeth

Will change hands quickly,

An ox with seven

Will butt its owner,

An ox with nine

Will run in nine directions

And won’t spare even the family priest.

X

To inspect the teeth

Of a skewbald ox

Is a waste of time.

XI

A thin-tailed ox

With a swamp deer’s piss

Brings prosperity.

XII

A blue-flanked ox

With purple horns

Can’t go wrong.

XIII

One plough is death,

Two’s survival,

Three’s good business,

Four’s a kingdom.

XIV

A wise farmer does his own tilling,

The one less wise walks beside his team,

But the farmer who goes looking for tillmen

Loses his seeds.

XV

A small ploughshare

Tickles the field.

XVI

A kite’s screech from atop a ruin:

Sign of rain.

XVII

A chameleon

Scrambles up a tree

Tail first:

Expect a flood.

XVIII

Clouds throughout the day,

A clear sky at night:

Famine.

XIX

The clouds from the west are misers.