The poem “Drought” by Sitanshu Yashaschandra is about the literal and figurative effects of a serious drought on the speaker, their family, and their community. The speaker refers to animals, human beings, and the broader environment as all being negatively affected by the ongoing arid conditions. Throughout, the speaker refers to their mother as giving advice about how the drought may progress and, especially, the actions that the speaker and others—referred to as “we”—should take to mitigate the drought’s damage. These comments center on a well, and include the effort needed to pull up a bucket.

The poem includes numerous fantastic descriptions of the ways various creatures, not just the speaker, experience the drought. These descriptions may suggest that the drought’s severity is stimulating the speaker’s imagination or even harming their mind, perhaps causing hallucinations. The speaker offers existential musings in the form of numerous questions about states of being and concepts related to water and its lack. One such key question is, “What is thirst?”

The poem begins with a description of a single large, motionless animal, a tortoise. It ends with several lines describing multiple tiny creatures, ants, and repeats the word many times. This progression from large to small suggests the vast magnitude of the drought’s effects. The speaker also includes cultural references to Indian folk tales but is careful to distinguish such tales from their own perceived reality.