Two prose poems | Inder Salim

History, what do you say, what do I want ?

  

Zameen Hamari, Kagaz Tumharey. Vataan Hamara, Hakumat Tumhari.

People sang songs of resistance in different languages,

at different locations against any Occupier in the past.

Before the gun arrived, it was a sword. 

Power flows through the barrel of a gun.

Revolutions begin with a promise, but eventually, lapse into a mass of unarmed people running towards the symbols of tyranny and dislodge the cruel at the helm.

That is a history lesson too.

Yet, a natural way forward stimulates the logic: only a sword can replace a sword, a gun with another gun. Gun is the prime symbol of any discourse about resistance.

But a good lawyer, Hazrat-e-Naseh, jenab A.G Noorani says, “Kashmiri Leadership should prepare a manifesto of the United Movement of Kashmir and take to the streets, after renouncing all forms of violence, and assert their right to freedom of speech and freedom to move in peaceful procession”.

I listen to the aged lawyer, more than what the Namaloom Bandookbardar is doing in the forest.

To hell with the thing called poetry

Pehlu Khan was lynched by cow vigilantes in broad daylight.

His dying -declaration goes into the dustbin, although

Witnesses and his two sons deposed in the case.

The court of law released all the six accused yesterday,

and today is happy Independence day of India.

 Entire Kashmir is locked. People are arrested for no crime.

Tacitus said “They created desolation and call it peace”.

                                       

Government knows what it is doing. Or,

It is Nero, who turned his eyes away,

and did not gaze upon the atrocities which he ordered.

Adulteration of air, of food, of politics, is in the air we breathe.

People are afraid to look gentle. Aggression and hyper nationalism gives people  a sense of security. 

 What is more shocking- a strange middle segment, brainwashed

by Hindu supremacists is celebrating unashamedly.

*image courtesy Reuters