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Month: January 2020

A Seditious Song!

Published by Hamraaz on 31-01-2020

I’m dreaming seditious dreams,
I’m singing a seditious song!
I’m loving my neighbors,
don’t care where they’re from—
let’s abolish all checkpoints
and borders…
as we sing a seditious song!

I’m dreaming seditious dreams,
I’m singing a seditious song!
I’m praying for freedom
from fear and from want—
let’s plant crops, not walls,
on our borders…
as we sing a seditious song!

I’m dreaming seditious dreams,
I’m singing a seditious song!
I’m reading Ambedkar,
he makes perfect sense—
let’s annihilate things that
divide us…
as we sing a seditious song!

I’m dreaming seditious dreams,
I’m singing a seditious song!
Some days let’s be boys,
some days let’s be girls—
let’s fall in love when
we want to…
and we’ll sing a seditious song!

I’m dreaming seditious dreams,
I’m singing a seditious song!
Let’s open a library,
we’ll read what we want—
we’ll argue, and think
together…
as we sing a seditious song!

I’m dreaming seditious dreams,
I’m singing a seditious song!
It’s natural to cry,
to feel anxious and scared—
let’s heal each other
and struggle…
as we sing a seditious song!

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The Anti-Corruption CM Speaks his Mind

Published by Hamraaz on 29-01-2020

Meanwhile in the capital, the CM speaks
at a town hall about unemployment,
the price of onions, and the danger
of Hindu spies from Pakistan.
He does not mention the possibility
that torture, custodial rape,
and preventative detention
of citizens and politicians
might be among the gravest
forms of modern corruption.

The next evening, at a Golf
Links wedding reception,
guests sipping wine
and Kashmiri Kava
murmur and sigh as he
and his entourage sweep
in to greet the happy couple.

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That One is an Animal

Published by Hamraaz on 29-01-2020

There are some who give off an evil glow,
no matter what colour clothes they wear.

In a state just a bus ride from here,
a leader shouts promises of revenge;

what he says quietly, we can only guess.
I have not been home to see my children

in two weeks, says the man selling peanuts
on the dusty road that runs along the drain,

but I hear things are bad—
they come in the night and take away

our young men, and they gun
us down in the streets.

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In Praise of Azadi

Published by Hamraaz on 27-01-2020

-after Bertolt Brecht

It’s simple,
anyone can grasp it.
It requires no force
or violence.
The exploiters tell us
to sell, borrow and buy it;
pandits and priests
disguise it with dogma;
and tyrants call it ‘sedition’,
when the wrong people say it.
It is against buying, selling,
debt and dogma—
and ‘sedition’ sheds
all meaning in its presence.
The rulers call it worthless,
but we know:
it is priceless.
They have never
given it away freely—
we’ve had to seize it,
again and again.
It is the simplest thing,
so hard to hold on to.

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Republic Day Bad Translation Blues

Published by Hamraaz on 26-01-2020

Friends, these are confusing times and everywhere
I go I hear people using words in confusing ways—
it’s like we’re living in some kind of twisted fever dream
or a second rate postmodern language poem. In Kashmir,
torture has long been known as ‘interrogation’,
but now martial law is called ‘development’,
and if you chant or write azaadi in bold letters,
in many states, it’ll be translated as ‘sedition’.
Almost everyone refers to police lynchings
as ‘encounters’ or ‘rough justice’, but at JNU,
the police and their masters now say ‘accused’
when referring to victims of a crime,
and at Jamia they seem to understand library
to mean a ‘place to lob tear gas’,
not a place to read and discuss books—
and speaking of reading, if you’re a Dalit leader,
the police now says reading aloud the constitution
on the steps of a mosque is ‘instigating violence’,
and that, my friends, can land you in Tihar Jail!
(In a related matter, to celebrate the approach
of Republic Day, the Lieutenant Governor
has decreed that if you do land in a Delhi jail,
you can be held without lawyers or charges,
at least until April. But don’t worry; our leaders
have assured us that this is a ‘routine matter’.)

Yes, friends, these are confusing times—
but between us at least,
let’s try to be honest and clear:
when used together,
inquilab and solidarity mean
‘a meeting of power and love’,
and as long as we remember that,
they won’t divide us,
we’ll win.

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There are Other Names For These Things

Published by Hamraaz on 24-01-2020

Before the darkness,
you used to laugh

when your Communist
friends warned you,

Never forget the Golden Rule:
he who has the gold makes the rules!

In UP, newspapers report
that police raided a madrassa

and arrested 1oo young students
and a 66 year old cleric

who they stripped naked
in the cold and tortured all night.

After their release,
some of the students said

they’d been beaten and forced
to chant Jai Shree Ram,

while others came out crying,
bleeding from their rectums.

No one expects an investigation.

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Eclipse

Published by Hamraaz on 22-01-2020

-December 26, 2019

I dreamed a group of us
were kidnapped by a pair
of sociopaths—

they explained they were
conducting an experiment:
they would blind half of us

in one eye and half of us in both
to see how this would affect
our ability to love.

When I told you, you said:
That’s just a dream about
the leaders of our country.

Later, the owner of a tea shack
handed us an X-ray of a broken foot
and gestured at the half-eaten sun.

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December 20: Rising

Published by Hamraaz on 18-01-2020

-for Chandra Shekhar Azad

When they finally write the history
of how we won this fight,

they’ll say the tide turned
at Jama Masjid

when Chandra Shekhar Azad
held up the constitution,

and a photo of Dr. Ambedkar,
before leading the charge that freed

first Daryaganj, then Delhi
from the idea that we could be

so easily cowed and beaten.
That evening we all somehow knew

that somewhere in Lutyens’ Delhi
the Home Minister was pacing

and pounding his fists on a wall—
and though the Chief

later turned himself in,
by then we all understood

that neither police, nor army—
nor the devil himself

can turn back the sea
when it rises.

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Mandi House

Published by Hamraaz on 18-01-2020

-December 19, 2019

Though we had seen what
they’d done to the students,

something changed
that day in Delhi;

the police filled bus after bus
with people like us

who had come simply
to stand for our own rights

and for those of our neighbors.
Dropped on the edge of town,

hundreds returned to be taken again.
It is worse than we thought,

but I am fine now—
many have it much harder,

is what you told the children.
Later you showed me

the boot-sized, black bruises
on both of your legs

and confessed
you had cried while bathing.

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Not a Poem or a Song

Published by Hamraaz on 15-01-2020

—for Shaheen Bagh

Yesterday, you asked me to write a poem
or a song about the women of Shaheen Bagh,
and I laughed and said,
that’s not possible—
the women of Shaheen Bagh
are a poem and a song—
but last night as I drifted
off to sleep in my warm bed,
it came to me that I’d been wrong—
the women of Shaheen Bagh
are not a poem or a song,
they are women who have been sitting
for weeks, night and day, on a road—
in spite of cold wind and hard pavement,
in spite of the threat of lathi’s,
tear gas and jail—
they’ve been sitting because they won’t stand
to see students beaten by police,
to see unjust laws divide the land—
because they are stubborn and right and strong—
and that, my friend, is more powerful and beautiful
than any poem or song anywhere.

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In the Beginning

Published by Hamraaz on 12-01-2020

I kept hearing people say
the same words over and over

wherever I went—
sometimes in greeting

or farewell,
sometimes in prayer—

the neighbor downstairs,
the electrician in the market,

the man who cleans
the toilet in the park.

The more it happened,
the more anxious I felt.

When I mentioned it to the chemist,
he lowered his voice and said,

Yes, it’s no longer just
a greeting or a prayer,

it’s become a celebration—
and a challenge.

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Abrogated

Published by Hamraaz on 12-01-2020

Changing the rules without consent: the true aim of development?
Political gain or property grab, in the name of development?

Lock up the kids before they hurl stones in protest or anger.
Preventive detention: just a move in this game of development?

Jail the leaders, shutter the press: speech and sight are dangerous—
lead pellets rip through retinas and fan flames of ‘development’.

Markets are closed and, friends, I’ve heard, freedom is now an outlawed word;
do dreams deferred wilt or explode in the shame of development?

Healing old wounds takes time and care; tear gas obscures the things we share—
brothers and sisters, please beware of false claims of development.

You say, Hamraaz, you’re so naive; it’s more complex than you perceive!
But we won’t right wrongs by hanging them in warped frames of development.

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