Liberty Day

I

The streets are deserted, nay even the dogs would not come sniffing

These August afternoons, these are the days for their mating;

Maybe, for midnight hours they are waiting

Do they know today is the Independence Day or don’t they simply care?

The dogs should loiter and linger in the streets because today is a special day.

And us, radio and television bark at us to come

On this day for the festival at the special venues.

But why the streets are deserted, the dogs may know not.

The bomb blasts, the blood, the rush at the hospitals show it all.

India, do you know why the streets are deserted?

II

Seventy-five years

With all the never-ending tragedies.

You call it independence;

Don’t you have any dignity?

Don’t complain.

Don’t ever complain.

Never complain when you are humiliated,

You know you will be humiliated.

But don’t complain.

India, forgive me and my tribesmen

We have the heart of a whore

India, you also have the heart of a whore.

III

We are free

We are free to kill each other

We are free to let ourselves be killed

We are free to loot

We are free to let others loot us.

India, don’t let us be free.

IV

Deserted streets;

We have abandoned hopes, and enter here.

Yes, liberty brings no desolation

But look here, the bomb-torn streets

And the flag, it flies only inside the fort

And the delusive lessons we have been taught all these years

And all the lies we have always been told all these years

Seventy-five years of emptiness 

India, don’t you know why the streets are deserted?

India, you know why the streets are deserted.

Revised in Aug 2022.

Meiteilon version: This version was presented in the two-day Bangalore Poetry Festival 2022 at the Leela Palace: