Whether he’s
a terrorist
or a family man–
and whether he’s
in Canada,
UP or Pakistan–
when a state kills
without a trial,
don’t name it encounter–
name it, call it,
what it is:
either war or murder.
Comments closed-for Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita Maybe it’s just habit, but even all these months after they locked down the city and took away friends of your friends, sometimes you still float away at that moment when light’s fading and the first bats are flying; and when you wake with a start it is already dark— you’re not sure where you are, but you hear the door bang— and then you’re relieved to find it’s a friend who wants to play cards— or the newspaper man, bringing the bill— not someone who’s come to take you away: we don’t need police, they spread only fear.Comments closed
-for Shiv Kumar Hauling carts and vendors home, weary horses stop to drink from a bucket on the road at the edge of Saidulajab. They have no time to frisk or roam, just to quench and shake and blink, as they pull their heavy loads up the road by Saidulajab. What happens next, I do not know, except to say their clop and clink grows softer, softer, as they go southward from Saidulajab. There’s news of torture on my phone; some folks are treated worse, I think, than the beasts that pull and slow at the edge of Saidulajab.Comments closed
-Delhi, October 13 Smoke presses down on the 5 pm sky leaving the sun bloated and glowing, like a molten bronze medal, or a strange neon fruit. As raptors glide in high, hungry circles, crows keep watch from ragged rooflines, and closer to earth, children run laughing through lanes lined with dust and shuttered shops. This weekend, we’ll read the police have beaten another reporter, and this reading will make us remember this is our city, we must take it back.Comments closed
-a letter to the editors Pandit or pauper, doctor or gangster, under the law, professions don’t matter: if they set out to kill you, without a court order, that’s not an ‘encounter’, that is a murder.Comments closed