In these desperate times
when we are running faster
than we ever had to keep track of
the terrible time bomb ticking away
in a deafening silence, before
all our freedoms are seized from us,
and only few are openly showing
their seditious hearts on the streets,
even though they will eventually be
incarcerated behind bars
sooner or later,
what profound poetry can I offer you?
a haiku on honest horrors of the hour?
or a ghazal about grim and gusty
garble gossip maybe?
or maybe a sonnet on smothering
slaughter of sincere sinisters?
while the rest of us were
fascinated by talks of
temples and terrorism,
development and disempowerment,
the prerequisite chaos and disorder
was being manufactured amidst
a frenzied orgy of violence
and when the barbarous baby
started playing old games of
burning houses in broad daylight,
the non-violent and peace-loving nation
became numb and silently watched
the beginning of a new aftermath
the unsettled stillness of our restless lands
and its immobile requiem
has motivated the men in power,
(it’s almost always the men in power)
full of the insolent arrogance
that comes out of the self-submergence
in the holy piss of cows,
to handle irrelevant issues of disenfranchisement
with utmost success
because handling the issues,
as it turns out now,
is a brand-new euphemism for
massacring thousands of innocents
few godmen claim that
this butchery is an endowment
of our beloved gods to cleanse
the sacred soil of our
soon-to-become saffron state
if that is to believed true then
this home-delivered hatred
is just a sample product
a trial on fire of something
more vicious, brutal, cruel
and unimaginable mass destruction
that is yet to come soon
there are also other prosperous products
on the display in our not-so-free markets
especially those cheap ones under
the scheme of buy one get one free
buy cultural nationalism, get religious bigotry free
buy female empowerment, get ‘love jihad’ free
buy freedom of speech and expression, get UAPA free
and the list goes on and on
for those who can afford them
since the show must go on
a delicious debate keeps playing
twenty-four seven on
our television screens for their usual
anaesthetised, unblinking audience
to acrimoniously decide upon
the better ways to wage wars
against our own people
to make new strategies to crush
the bare bones of their broken bravery
the pilgrimage of doom
is excitedly racing towards us
and perhaps we’re still gambling
on the fickleness of our capability
to remember trending crises only
can we not forget the many
beautifully and powerfully formed
political resistance of our past?
can we begin to hone our memory
and learn from our history
of unconscionable personal tragedies?
can we continue to march and reclaim
and build public opinion on the streets?
can we please become
a collective pain in the ass?
Aaditya Pandey is a student of Journalism in Delhi. He reads a lot on politics, culture and art, and thus, consequently, attempts to write sometimes.
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