Anupam Roy, They carry life, Chinese ink and googly eyes on Paper, 5 x 33 ft, 2020
“The scene,
Arrested word
Like the broken tear
Slashed through the
Squares and rectangles
Of the gratings at
Our counter meetings.
I can only pityingly
Stare.
The escort van roars
And stirs up dust.
Something smells
As I turn my view inside
Rifles and Khaki uniforms do
The surveillance.
My self writhes
I am agitated
As the petrol smells,
My wailing entrails move
I turn in
My view from you
In the outer world
Towards you
In the inner world.
Time and I have only two limbs
Day and night
With the desire to work a bit faster
Time grasping its arrow-seconds
Me clasping my quill
Move on
And go on moving.
The enemy has four legs
Tele-ear, tele-gaze, radio-mouth
And armed palms.
Above all,
The rapacity to live on
All alone.
It is for this
He annihilated his heart,
For this he smothers its vibrations.
In what discourse
Can we converse
With the heartless?
Bloodhound’s gasping tongue
His neck-strap,
The whip in the prodding master’s hand,
He assumes, from his rank.
What language can translate the utterance
That it’s felony to shackle reflections?
Property
Fractures the human world
Into custodians and criminals
But when I assert and declare
Banishment of the very thing
Property’s cage turns me a defendant, all right,
But,
For the overlord’s eyes
I am a Communist
And
As if nothing can surpass it
He arraigns me as a
Naxalite
Let us persist to actualize it exactly
Let us perpetuate ‘treason’
For the purpose of multitudes”
Source: This work inspired from Varavara Rao’s poem. Excerpt poem by revolutionary poet Varavara Rao, who has been in jail for 22 months as an under trial in the Bhima-Koregaon case (despite lack of evidence against him).
THE OTHER DAY, 1990, Varavara Rao, From: Muktakantham, Publisher: Samudram Prachuranalu, Vijayawada, 1990
Translation: 1997, D. Venkat Rao, From: Pretext: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory, Vol. 18: Nos. 1-4, Publisher: Victor Vitanza, Clemson, 1997
