Category: violence

My favourite spot

It is easy to imagine
You are sipping
Your morning tea
On your favourite spot
Reading your book

And suddenly
It’s all reduced
To rubbles
Except the place
Where you are sitting
In your favourite spot

You look for elevator
You need stairs
You need to run
Ground beneath feet
Did shake

And now it’s just you
On a high rise
With roof blown
Staring in disbelief

Incredibly lucky? Isn’t it?
To be perched precariously
To watch the scene change
Within seconds
You don’t know
Is it a nightmare?

Where did this missile come from?
When did the war reach my home
Till yesterday I was a civilian
A honest tax paying citizen bystander
When I did I turn into a victim?
A witness to such horror?

Do they even know I am alive?
My dear and near ones who
Probably are watching TV
Sitting in their favourite spot
Will they count me among the dead?

With no signal, no electricity or kitchen
I will have to wait
With this rage, confusion
Fear and grief
Why were we abandoned?
Who abandoned us?
The governments? UN? God?

Will this attack bring peace?
Cease-fire atleast ?
Nations will spar
Deads will be numbered
And not named
Living ones will have no names
Only identities

Suspended in disbelief
I wonder if the house
Was it insured for missile attacks?
But was this an official attack?
Will there be a paper work?
How will they prove?

Everyone will spin the narratives
We are good in condemning
What we cannot prevent
Words, words and more words
Us and them
We forget – they made us
And we made them

Imagine, it is not too difficult
Planet on the brink of extinction
But till the end money needs to be made
Stocks to be bought and sold
No need to see what companies do
Buy and sell
As long as they bring in dividends

Was this missile made by you and me?
Play the probability game
The answer may be infinitesimal
But finite
Ofcourse we didn’t know
Where our money went
Taxes and investments

We were just doing jobs
Building our homes
A place to be
With a favourite spot
To sit, sip and read
To plant our succulents

I look around
My spot, books, succulents
All are there
But rest all is destroyed
Reduced to a pile of contrete
They will find me
They need to mourn
And avenge!

26/10/23

Love and Hate

Hate could
Learn lessons
From immortal
Love

How to hold
It all in
Till the
Heart breaks

How to turn
Away coldly
And never
Look back

You don’t
Need a knife
Just words
Are enough

Hate could
Learn lessons
From Immortal
Immoral Love

How to
Let go
And not
Fight for

How to wait
Till it comes
To knock
On the door

Hate just
Wastes it all
By losing
The battles

For in wars
Hate just
Blinds you
Fools you

Love recognises
The other
Who stands
With the sword

Love knows
How to embrace
And defeat
All the hate

Hate just frets
Fumes and
Builds the rage
To go on rampage

Love remains
Immortal
Tiny cry of life
For Life itself

Shame

Shame

Perhaps it is easy
To violate
A woman’s body
And soul
And then walk with
Head held high
It is all done
To teach a lesson
To create fear

Perhaps it is easy
To plunder the earth
To dig out all
That is worth
And then walk with
Head held high
It is all done
For a profit
To create wealth

Will Earth save itself?
What about women?
Bilkis Bano is silent
Our silence is more deafening

We will rage
For Earth, for Bilkis
Yet they will
Walk free
Reign free

That is how it is
Dont ask why?
It’s reign of the
Shameless and inhuman
Emperor after all parades
In full nakedness and glory

How does one teach shame
To shameless tyrants?

#BilkisBano

Heaven and Hell

Your idea of heaven
Is my idea of hell!
How will we ever reconcile?

You talk of supremacy
I walk with the oppressed
How do we find a middle ground?

You use brute loud force
I sing my songs of protest
Do you ever hear me?

You think might is right
I believe meek too has a right
How do I protect my child?

You are drunk on power
I root for my freedom
How do we avoid the fight?

Dice is definitely loaded
You will win this fight
But still you will lose

You will remember me
At the door of heaven
Your sins
Will be my testimony
Your lies
My truth

The fire you lit to hide your crimes
Will burn down the heaven
Your supremacy is a sham
You have power that is not yours

One day humanity will rise
One day humanity has to rise!





Lost Humanity

Scavenging under the rubbles
She looked for humanity
It was yet another day of
Strategic bombing

They tried to flee in vain
From guns and grenades
And bombs
And landmines
And beastly men

Death was everywhere
In every form
It caught up with all
Even those who escaped these
Troubled shores

She kept scavenging for humanity
Under the rubbles
Of the wasteland
Many died
For the sake of few
Who wanted to live

It was a lost battle
Under the rubbles
She scavenged
For dead humanity

The Blue Door

There is a blue door at end of the road. People say it’s the door to the happiness.  One can hear laughter and songs, but no one is ever seen crossing the threshold. Neighborhood believes that all the peace and happiness has got locked behind the blue door. No one knows who has locked all the joy away but the sadness and anger that is left behind is quite palpable.

As one walks down the road, one can hear screams of the locked lunatic sibling coming from an attic of one house. They say he lost his mind over a girl who was forced to marry someone from her clan. From another house one can hear heart rending lament of a mother whose only child has gone missing. A misogynist cop rants and screams in the other one, ordering his wife and children who tremble with fear. A young girl screams hysterically in the next one whenever she hears a footstep, “They are coming for me. Save me.”

The town has a church, a temple, synagogue and a mosque where prayers are held daily. Everyone prays for peace and prosperity that they think is locked elsewhere behind the Blue door. They all hold each other’s faith in doubt. They all live in constant fear and pride of their gods. They fight and attack each other relentlessly. It feels as though they are compelling their gods to compete in a race to gain the highest glory and power of the land (just like they wanted the children to compete once upon a time). Sadly, they have managed to drive both gods and children away.

After prayers everyone returns to the little hell they have managed to create. The Blue door remains shut forever. In their fight, hatred and bigotry, the town has forgotten that the gods have left key to the door with them – the key that opens only when there is love and kinship.

Jump

Unable to find answers

Unable to bear the questions

Acutely aware

Of all closed doors

And humiliations

And all silences

She decided to jump

As she walked along the edge

Too many thoughts

Crowded her mind

She wanted to cut loose

From the past

From the present

The questions

The helplessness

The despair

Her luckless and

Loveless life

When no one pays heed

When life is cruel

What’s the point?

What’s the point?

On and on

The thoughts fogged her mind

Tears blinded her vision

Suddenly a stranger stopped her

“Please take one bunch please.

I haven’t eaten whole day”

A blur of bunch of yellow roses

Were staring at her face

Prodding her was

Another voice of despair

Carrying a bunch of bloom

What an irony!!

She paid the boy

And watched the train go by

She brought home

The yellow flowers.

She wondered…

There is a point maybe…

There are people maybe…

There are doors maybe…

There are paths maybe…

There is a future maybe…

That day she didn’t jump

But took a leap of faith instead!

Seeking the Moon

I seek the moon tonight

With thousands of others

From my window

Caged momentarily tonight

In my cell window

Moon too looks desolate

And Persecuted

Was I persecuted for

Beholding the Moon?

My parents at my faraway home

Me, at my detention centre

Along thousands of refugees,

Illegal immigrants

And activists around the world

All are looking at the Moon

Moon smiles as ever grimly

Bonded forever to the Earth

Spinning with twined destiny

It tells me

We all need to wait

There is no easy way

To Salvation

And Freedom

Other

Peasants will rise
They will sing
They will protest
They will take bullet
They will save democracy
While we will fret
And intellectualize!

Educated middle classes
Don’t you worry
These whom you ‘other’
Will save your jobs too
They don’t need you
But you do
To reap crops,
Cook your food
Cobble your shoes
Tailor your clothes,
Build your homes
Clean your homes
Toilets and cars too!!

After the revolution
They will still come
And assume their lowly jobs
While you will rot in your guilt
Or die with a foolish smug!
History textbooks will talk of them
But you will be mentioned
As the ‘other’ who let the system down!!

#saynotohate

Modern Day Macbeth

We are still under the hangover of Macbeth – the play by Rajat Kapoor which was staged yesterday at Kalamandir, Kolkata. It really give hope that there are people who are voicing their dissent loud and clear!

The satire was not lost…starting with three witches being compared to Kardashians, fascism being called Karaoke Fascism, how it needs one small ‘push’ to make any person violent, how violence is the potent force that binds the society and ending with the satirical disclaimer by two jokers played brilliant by Jim Sarabh and Vinay Pathak.

Ranvir Shorey portrayed the dilemma of modern day Macbeth (who kills to become a CEO)

with troubled conscience superbly. Each dialogue was important but unfortunately much was difficult to decipher due to poor sound and our back alley seats. They made it very clear that given current state of affairs, the joke was entirely on the elitist audience!
Bravo is all I can say!!

I hope it will make people introspect what they are endorsing so easily is dangerous and the blood stain on our conscience will only grow bigger and bigger even if we try to wipe or justify it!

#macbeth #shakeaspeare #rajatkapoor #jimsarabh #vinaypathak #ranvirshorey