Happy New Year!

Because you’re celebrating the new year
in a grand way
The eviction drive hasn’t stopped
and only the evicted know
there’s nothing new to today–
only old pain.

Because you’re writing ‘Happy’
before a brand new 365 days
It’s not going to stop the bulldozer
from running over
India’s chest.

Because a year has just retreated
It doesn’t mean
the deserted red-coloured school bag
of the demolition site in Assam
where the bulldozer has only displaced
a hundred homes
will find a new home!

For the homeless and the dispossessed
First January is just another
dry cold day.
They are forever busy
in searching for food and fire
just like yesterday, the day before yesterday
Or last year.

Year after year
It’s tiresomely the same
the food and the foodie
have the same role to perform.

Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Her poetry collection, The Musings of the Dark, was published in 2020. The book has about a hundred poems written in protest against the humanitarian crisis from the revocation of Article 370, the Delhi riots, and the Shaheen Bagh movement, to the unbearable sufferings of the migrant labourers due to the unplanned COVID – induced lockdown.

Featured image: amol sonar / Unsplash