Arts Of The Working Class Logo

Azadi, Freedom

  • Mar 18 2020
  • Vasundhara M.
    The author wishes to remain anonymous.

The word: an echo; a fantasy; a necessary trick

a smooth word

That makes belief

Oh, so outrageously intimate

Jaan se pyaari, Azadi!

 

The word was waiting

in crouching pose, gnawing 

at the fodder, the fodder, the endless fodder.

different foods are cooking now,

different waters in the pot.

 

we, who realized too late

How precious everyone is, arrive now

to a forging: a future will appear

as we shift our gaze down to

our hands as historical hands.

 

Azadi: to be student in library, unthreatened.

by thick sticks in firm, lost hands? 

Remember those inter-class competitions?

Sides I remember were assigned by slits

of paper pulled from that clueless bowl by those clueless hands

 

(debate in to the microphone

with a straight back

pulled back hair in neat pigtails,

ironed white uniform,

belief disregarded) 

 

(desire. kamiyaabi: do something to me!)

We listened for instruction, not transformation

tell me then, how did you learn?

to ripple through these thick polluted waters

with such integrity, such foolish hope?

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