"Kisi ke baap ka Hindustaan thodi hai."
—
Rahat Indori, an Urdu poet from Indore who
was detained during the Emergency for calling the government
a bunch of thugs.
in the audience was a child my age every year belted schoolboy in
the lot of parked buses singing hum honge kaamyab ek din i
cannot tell him this our days discover whole maps discover floorboards laugh
like children but in the afternoon the blood below our knees froths pledge
allegiance where are you from? where are your parents from? &
the police rounds everywhere like the year of partition the year of no country
wants you to smile in portraits. you know it's true but you don't say the wall
pretended to be ground ground pretended to be house house pretended to be full
of people. night after night after neck without blood we knew better the
playground dirt wrists pounding body musk god save voice yells
& faces wither from their faces like garland of sweat oil runs toward
the fields burns. i learnt the word people before i learnt the
word country. the peepal tree ripe with a story we are allowed to exist inside
textbooks give me hometown with no ghost trains delivering war hometown
with red mangoes no one angry at the world. here’s everyone seated
blood-curled fields speak in monosyllables what is a country if not a country
of people? we trace our bodies outlines in my dreams our hands forever stitched
in prayer. good children who is there? your mother shouts from
the other room and no one comes running your mother sang verse after verse
after god her gaze rushed towards the door when you were late home from school
& she thought of a thousand other things cried. my people know my
people by the sound their breath makes when the lights go out when the lights
go out and the cops say who will protect us? so someone died
then another then 20 people then more. who did you say you voted for?
who is a citizen of this country? in the news someone said i will bury you
alive and there's a goonj in the city and my people are never home
anymore.
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No Country (3) |
Notes
The poem is in response to the anti-CAA and NRC
protests in India.
CAA+NRC is the greatest act of social poisoning
by the Indian government.
We must raise our voice
and stand up with the people against CAA, NRC and NPR.
We must fight to protect
our future. Speak up.
Goonj means echo.
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