Origin of The Poem
The poem was first written by Dr Pradhan in his mother tongue Oriya in 1992. It was subsequently translated by the poet himself into English and got published in Vani Vikas, the literary journal of Utkal University in 1994 under the author's pen-name of Helios El Sol. In the words of the poet, the single event that prompted him to write the poem was "a news-item published in the daily Samaja in 1992 which described the story of a poor tribal woman who was compelled to sell off her six-months old child for a paltry sum of forty rupees in the face of starvation..."
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