Peace & Resistence

By Dr. Piku Chowdhury

Peace and Resistance

For the love of myself, I can’t shut out the drumbeats

Reverberating in the primitive groves of ancient times

Daughter of shadows, you burn in shades of my heart.

I can’t jump over untouched spaces that

Hide under urban gloss, overlying putrid fungal stretch.

If Vemula burns and daughter of soil

Is groped with soiled nails and golden fangs

The untouchable touched with carrion lust,

For the love of self, a daughter of a sacred land

Where Shanti flows in honeyed air, and

Is enshrined in the fluttering flag,

I allow the primitive drums to roar

strange rhythms loud, and echo in blood.

For the love of myself, I strain my ear

To the silent resilience of nation’s father.

And then — I wield the reticent pen

Pregnant with the pent-up pain

And catch the helpless weeping rain

To create a song woven in weft

Of Bapu’s sublime dreams of justice

Liberty, equality, reverence, mercy-

The flowing lines an obeisance

to the power of peaceful resistance.

Against dismal discrimination,

Corruption and exploitation.

The lines take flight like the winged herald

Of peace; the rhythm echoes in groves

With the power of a lonesome figure, righteous in resistance

Marching erect with might of peace; undaunted will

That breathes new life in every faltering existence.

.

Dr. Piku Chowdhury is a teacher in a government aided post graduate college of education and an author of 8 books. She has published more than 70 articles in international journals and acted as resource person in many national and international seminars and symposia. She has published poems, acted as editor,  translator and core committee member of curriculum revision in the state. 

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