A Clarion Call

THEN 

As I was sitting, reading inside my room one night

I heard the people shrieking
The sounds of fright were unceasing.
The dogs barked

Then came the cops.

On the street the folks had had hooch in torchlight
Away from their pitiful wives and unruly kids
On a silent, moonless night of load-shedding
It was a curfew too—oh, the god-police forbids
Curfew and bandh and general strikes cause no affright
Yet the night was not right that night.

More boots thudded against the concrete road
And more whipping, more shrilling cries, more barking followed
While I got up from the chair, and knelt down
Gritting my teeth and clenching my fist
I resolved this was just the struggle for existence,
And fighting—this violence fuels our essence
All the happiness killed with the aborted child of the night
And how I wanted to piss on the night’s face!

NOW 

How long should we sleep with these nightmares?
With our half-awaked consciousness, with our own mistakes
It’s no more time we count our lives on prayers.
And how long should we dole out the anti-rabies spares?
For those military men in galore, their evil glares
For those ever-volatile flares.

When the soaring doves coo,
Their cooing clues us into the eerie silence of the hills
And about the breathtaking view
We may perchance find serene moorland
Those are aplenty, coming frequently in stills
Unfortunately, though in our own land
We are strangers
The road is not the place to revel
But we do have a Loktak-full of good things to marvel
We love the fair Lady Justice,
with weighing scales, swords—and living gracious.
And there, no more Delhi’s beggars,
no more violence-branders.

We must dig deeper:
beneath the surface, beneath even the leisha 
to bury the embers
of injury, ruin, and the false reigns of power.
Only then can we uncover
the tender things we still dare to dream.