A Sad State of Affairs

This country reeks of
atrocious war crimes and
mothers who have lost
their child to a foreseen mouth of evils.

Be careful before you ask the meaning of injustice,
for they serve it to you when you rise in rage.
They stifle your voice until the vocal cords
disorient in prison.
Where nights and days are two sides of the same coin;
where truth makes a rental in the wagon of falsehood;
where the night owl shrieks and the tears of the dissenter witness a drought.

The mannequin of the state
floods you with the vicious loop of hate
to your name,
to your mother
and then they come for your home.
In the span of a second,
the place which taught you to rebel
is demolished by the very people
who pledged to protect you.
The rubble, the tears, the screams all lie in vain.

This land which freed us from the colonisers
is yet again trapped under the boots of a state
that has failed our constitution.
They laugh at us when we stand in solidarity for
our sisters,
our brothers.
They question our patriotism
while they sell different parts of us
in the market of their greed.

What the country fails to see is,
we don’t forget the names of the revolutionaries,
no matter how many prison numbers
they assign to them.
We are seeing,
counting the days,
even if one day they snatch away calendars from us.
We are grieving at the burials
of people who were butchered silently by them.
We are raging together,
no matter how they try to muffle our mouth
with the chains of unjustness.

Prasangana Paul pursuing International Relations from Jadavpur University loves to create art and believes to rattle the bones of the vices from her words.

The featured image is an illustration by Pariplab Chakraborty. To view more such illustrations, click here.