Hardships and Heartache: Bollywood Living Legend Santosh Anand

Santosh Anand (? to present) and Verma Malik (13 April 1925 – 15 March 2009), translated from the Hindi by Manfred Spencer Alverston & Associates.

Water o’ water, what color are you?

That which you mix into me becomes my hue.

Water o’ water

O’ water o’ water

In this world amidst the civil

Some have remained as such:

Eating stale fractions of bread

And swilling cool water

In civility akin

By one drought, every quaff felt as if an amenity of Heaven

Water o’ water, what color are you?

Water o’ water, what color are you?

Comparable to hunger’s thirst and thirst’s hunger too.

Water o’ water, what color are you?

Water o’ water, what color are you?

That when you’re meeting with the Ganges River,

You become Holy Water.

That when you’re meeting with the clouds,

You become rainfall, nevertheless

Rainfall becomes a monsoon when

The sky pours heavy rains under duress.

Heavy rains instead

Heavy rains instead.

Heavy, horrid, nonstop rains feel possessed with fiery rage

That fiery rage extinguishes youthful vigor

Here and there you look about

Somewhere a roof has lost ground and cracks heavily like an unfathomable sieve

And living becomes appalling.

Water o’ water, what color are you?

It is the same as the Almighty Creator of this Universe.

Water o’ water, what color are you?

With every color entwined are you,

Your splendor outshines even the colors next to you

But when you wash out over one’s hopes your color becomes incomprehensible

It seems as if the blooming flower buds rashly delivered the message of Autumn.

Water o’ water, water o’ water, what color are you?

My color is as such the hope of living a hundred years,

It transformatively informs that hope of living for a hundred years.

Water o’ water

Water o’ water!

Santosh Anand (? to present) and Verma Malik (13 April 1925 – 15 March 2009), translated from the Hindi by Manfred Spencer Alverston & Associates.