Just three weeks ago, on the way
to the polling station
we saw a single, half-eaten
myna bird lying in the road.
Neither of us mentioned it;
the air was already
so heavy that day.
I no longer trust omens
and portents:
just last week, I dreamt
that Amit Shah was in jail,
but last night, I’m sure
I heard him whispering
in Kejriwal’s ear.
Maybe you remember a class 5 teacher,
who beat students, sometimes even
leaving bruises, and how he would tell
all the parents at Parent Teacher Meetings
how much it hurt him to have to discipline
unruly children, and how the parents—
even, perhaps, your parents—
would nod somberly, though they knew
he hit too hard.
Or maybe it was the professor who would
call quiet, first year students to his office
for extra help, because he was so concerned
about their progress, and everyone
in the class could see how uncomfortable
those students were, but no one said anything,
because, really, what was there to say,
except that he was so concerned?
Or maybe it was the husband of a neighbor
in your colony, who would tell everyone
about how worried he was about his wife—
she’s seeing a doctor, you know,
sometimes she can’t control her feelings—
and everyone would nod, but also secretly
wonder: does she scream because he beats her?
Or maybe it was the prime minister
of a large country, who invited the president
of a more powerful country to visit
on the day that mobs of organized terrorists
were planning to burn homes, businesses
and places of worship, knowing the police
would stand by or join in, and maybe
that prime minister knew his guest
would not condemn this terror,
thus showing all of us that the world
was powerless to stop it, and maybe
he also knew that all over the capital
and country, people and leaders
and even respectable newspapers
would choose to use words like ‘violent
demonstrations’ and ‘clashes’ to describe
what they understood was probably
a state sponsored pogrom,
and which might be the first step
towards something even graver.
And if we think long and hard about this,
we may come to understand something
that every successful abuser, bully
and tyrant already knows—
the importance and power of silence—
and if we think even harder about the bravery,
solidarity and love that that has sprouted in this city
and this country, in spite of the winter winds,
then we will know what we need to do now.
We will know what is to be done.
When right wing thugs
attack members of a religious
minority in broad daylight
in a nation’s capital
while the police look on
or join in the attacks,
that is not a ‘riot’,
that is a pogrom.
And when armed men in uniform
force their way into homes,
break furniture and take
jewelry and cash,
that is not ‘quelling a riot’,
that is loot and pillage.
And when students of a madrasa
in UP, or any other place,
emerge from jail with bruises
and rectal bleeding,
that is not ‘detention’,
that is torture and rape.
And when officers of the law
take young men accused
of a crime to an empty field
(on a hillside or under a flyover),
and then turn them loose
and shoot them dead as they run,
that is not an ‘encounter’,
that is murder.
And when any government
anywhere in the world,
at any time in history,
accepts, justifies or orders
these and many other crimes,
that is not a ‘democracy’,
that is tyranny.
And when any of us agree
to use words that mask
the truth of these
unspeakable things,
we are not using
‘measured language’
we are telling lies.
-for Modi, Trump and the rest of us
Modi says to Trump:
We have a lot in common—
we both build big walls.
Trump says to Modi:
True, my friend, but don’t forget,
my wall is bigger!
What neither one knows:
United, we’ll break walls, build
homes, plant seeds, and love.
Why not? It’s always better
when our neighbors prosper.
Also, Bangladesh zindabad,
and Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka…
In fact, why not just say,
saara jahaan zindabad?
What are we afraid of?
Let’s say it together:
Long live all the people
and creatures in this terrible,
wonderful world we share.
Comments closed-after Jeet Thayil
First, remember, your job
has little to do with homes,
and much to do with security.
You’ll have to choose:
security for whom?
If you choose security
for the powerful and rich,
expect to remain powerful and rich;
throw a party, invite the people
who matter. Understand,
you draw strength from sycophants,
snitches and men who wield
lathis and guns; hold them close.
Study the snake, the guard dog,
the jackal.
If you choose security
for the common people,
you’ll have to move fast—
your time here may be short.
Set your affairs in order,
tell your children you love them,
open libraries and hospitals—
hold festivals in parks. Dance,
sing, have a drink and pray.
Study crows, elephants,
and all creatures that gather
in flocks or herds. Do not fear:
we will not forget you.
Sometimes as you drift off
you feel your chest tighten;
your ears ring
and your lungs won’t fill,
like you’ve been shut
in a cold, dark vault,
or you are shackled
and shivering
in a cell somewhere
in Kashmir or Karnataka—
maybe they’ll beat you
if you ask to see the sky
or just because it is time
for the beating.
Lock your doors,
turn off the lights,
do not venture out
after dark.
I dreamt that, nearing his end,
my father wrote the story of his life
in the language of his grandmother.
I don’t understand the words,
he told me, but I think you
will find it useful someday—
it has something to do
with the way we lived
in the dark times that came
before these dark times.
It is not easy to remember,
he told me. It has something
to do with scattered light,
and how I love you.
The Delhi smoke is thick
tonight, my love—
but here on this wide road,
the wind is cool.
Remember how it used
to taste, you say—
like burning plastic, fear,
and diesel fuel.
This year, there is a new
scent in the air,
like flowers blooming
after a great fire.
I’m searching for a way
back home again—
Perhaps we’ll build a better
home, you say.
In UP last year,
93,000 people applied
for 62 government jobs—
jobs that required
a Class 5 education
and bicycle riding skills;
of the applicants, 3,700
held PhD’s, and 20,000
held post graduate degrees.
You have read many stories
like this and on some level
you understand it’s likely
the current system
is running into limitations
that education and growth
will be unable to overcome.
Western environmentalists
call it a climate crisis
and offer a Green New Deal;
new communists call it
a secular crisis of capitalism
and say it is hopeless to try
to see beyond the horizon
of a system that conditions
even the way we make love.
We’re all looking for a way
through: you, me,
the Chief Minister of UP,
and the crores who may
or may not have documents,
but who nonetheless haul
our trash, sweep our roads
and build our tall towers each day.
Some choose suicide or struggle,
some put their faith in fascism;
and some keep their heads
down and patiently wait
for some kind of a new
day to dawn.
This time, my barber does not lower
his voice as he announces:
They fed us hatred for weeks,
and a few do like the taste of that,
but most of us know it won’t fill your belly—
the broom has swept Delhi again!
Later, you tell me about the persistent
pain in your stomach: it’s been a week,
and I know it’s just food poisoning,
but it feels different this time—
like I have a gut full of grief,
or dread.
You tell me that you’re always sad;
you want to run away, but ask,
How can I run from myself?
I want to say you’re not alone;
lakhs, no crores are asking
questions just like this—
all over the world
rich and poor are asking them,
the children of refugees
and rulers are asking them,
academics and experts
are publishing reports about them,
pharmaceutical representatives,
psychiatrists, and self-help gurus
are making their living off of them.
This is not new, but it is urgent
and growing; and the darknessthat has fallen around us now
is just one sign of a larger,
grinding thing: we all sense
we’re approaching a rupture
that the old tricks of war,
debt and growth may finally
fail to delay—
and none of us can imagine
what lies beyond that horizon.
Friend, I can offer no clear
answer to your question,
but it has something to do
with solidarity and love,
how we’ll all have to
cross over together.
Yes, there have been many disappointments.
No, Ola and Uber were not defeated.
In spite of what you see as good intentions,
you feel the broom gave up too soon, retreated.
And who will find good jobs for those in need?
No one I know has convincing answers.
We dreamed last time we’d sweep the city clean
of inequality and other cancers!
No single man or party has the strength
to stand against the ones with the real power—
yes, all of us together may well fail,
but divided, we’ll be forced to bow and cower!
This vote is not a cure, friend, let’s talk straight—
now is not the time to vote for hate.
It is difficult to remember when it was or could be, but the
August sun was low, the air was clear and damp, and the roads
were still, except for the rattle and ring of cycles and bells. We
were walking through narrow lanes, offering to sing songs
about the songs we’d all sung during the darkness. A few doors
declined to open, and from time to time insults fell on us from
behind shuttered windows: immigrant, infiltrator, anti-
national, traitor— and other hard words which no longer
possessed any power or meaning. But on most corners, small
crowds greeted us with slaps on the back and many joined in
when we sang. In the late afternoon, as we crossed a muddy
field newly planted with tomato and pepper seedlings, a boy
ran up from behind us and demanded to know if we
remembered the song we’d been singing on Rajpath when the
police threw down their lathis and guns and melted into the
rising sea we’d all become. We solemnly nodded, then one of
us sputtered, and we all started laughing and shouting and
singing together. Later, we agreed that the song still tasted cool
and sweet every time we sang it, like water drawn from a hand
pump, like freedom.
In your dream, thin corpses
hang in a cold, dark room.
Strong men come and silently
slit them open—
they are harvesting handfuls
of organs or pearls.
As you tell me this,
news of another Jamia shooting
and more election rally hatred
streams across screens all over Delhi.
What have I to offer,
tender comrade, friend?
Night has fallen,
the horizon is near,
we’re all fighting
and longing for light.
-for Shadab Najar
In the video, it all moves so fast,
but when the frame freezes,
some things become clear.
We see a boy or young man,
mouth wide, as if he
is smiling as he shouts—
in his right hand, a pistol;
it is pointed towards
the sky. Behind him,
a line of police look on,
one is leaning on his lathi;
to one side, a cameraman films.
And now look at the man
with the long, wavy hair, striding
towards the man with the gun—
his arms are down,
his body open, as if to say,
I am not afraid of you,
and you have nothing
to fear from me,
as if to say,
Hold on—
come, let’s sit and talk.
There is one more thing
every parent will see
when they study this photo
of the striding man:
someone, somewhere
raised this one right,
this one is one to be proud of.
‘A girl, as part of the play’s dialogue, spoke
of beating anyone who would ever dare ask her
for her documents with a chappal’. -The Wire
The Emperor has no clothes:
every child knows the story;
our rulers have also learned it—
they understand its great power.
Every child knows the story:
the bully who’s secretly weak;
our rulers have also learned it—
why else charge a school with sedition?
A bully who’s secretly weak,
or wolves or demons disguised;
why else charge a school with sedition?
What do they fear? A chappal?
Wolves or demons disguised,
our rulers know what they’ve hidden.
What do they fear? A chappal—
or unafraid people who speak?
Our rulers know what they’ve hidden;
they understand its great power.
But unafraid people will speak:
The Emperor has no clothes!
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!
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.
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.
-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.
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.
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.
Comments closed-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.
-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.
-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.
—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.
The police are investigating
an AMU professor
for a Facebook post
about separation, sadness,
a failed moonshot,
and a cold northern region
which I shall refrain
from naming.
Late in the night,
smoke presses down
on the city,
and the Chowkidar’s
tap and whistle
disrupts my dreams again.
This morning, when I told you
that I’d dreamt
the theocracy had been declared—
and the internet was down
and it was no longer safe
to say ‘freedom’
in a song or slogan,
or even on the phone—
you just nodded
and said you’d woken,
sweating and shaking,
after dreaming of breaking
all your front teeth on a hard,
red apple from Kashmir.
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.
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.