-for Professor Ratan Lal The feelings of powerful people are so easily hurt, lately– the police investigate satire as if wit were a felony. Reason, humour, history are now enemies of the state; solidarity’s called ‘terror’; they see love and say ‘hate’. But what do they find most painful? A Dalit who speaks his mind, friends! (If Ambedkar were alive today, Tihar Jail is where you’d find him.)Comments closed
After the abrogation, but before Shaheen Bagh– the Ayodhya verdict was in the news, we all sensed a deepening dark. I think we were in Kolkata– or maybe I have that wrong; we were celebrating your love– I wanted to write you a song. It might have included lovers holding hands under tube lights– maybe dust, or my father’s hair– I tried, but it didn’t feel right. My friend, I did not tell you, but that was the day I decided to learn how to sing of the dark times, to banish the censors inside.Comments closed
I was sitting near the back at the launch of G.N. Saibaba’s book of poems and letters from prison when he slipped into the seat on my left– I might not have noticed, but his white hair was glowing like a Christmas star, or a tube light hung on the wall behind the priest at at Midnight Mass. His tremors were mostly gone; I only saw him shake once– when A.S. Vasantha Kumari described the solitary confinement cells in the Nagpur Central Jail. He disappeared before the Q and A, but later as I stood outside with friends giving thanks for the cool May rain we heard him whisper as he passed: Breathe deep, comrades, breathe deep– tonight you can smell the forest.Comments closed