“I was not a part of the protest.

Yes, I was too passive

only to stoke the rage

of the active political kin

Protesting

Night and day, selfless.

 

I was not a part of the protest at all!

Yet the aura dauntless

did haunt me with all

its woeful cries and calls,

shaming me that I lacked

the spine to take a stand

for our sister who was wronged…”

 

All the hue and cry of emotions

running, slide, defeatist- feminine

gravity forfeited

dumped forlorn

slowly died.

 

Ping pong

Ding-dong

Here I am again,

dawdling footloose

out of an envelope

nobody dared to open.

They say the Eyes solely follow the Nose

That sniffs Honour giant conscious

which at stake troubled them exceedingly.

The Nose blocked otherised odours

and slammed the doors, lilting

out of tongues lingering in the margins.

Yet, the livelong Hunger strike

Dominates, crushing them all

For a multitude of us pledged

to burn their abdominal lines

Satyagraha? Ahimsa?

Nah, Beyond them all!

 

“Where must have her dreams gone?

Sidelined along an unutterable

Solid shock- membrane?

Yet how a series of snapshots

hazily undress themselves

a black-and-white microcosm

reeling,

blurring reality encase a multiverse of ghosts,

The tableau: vulnerable horror, 

unleashing its venomous tongue,

preying trauma.

Prithee! Prithee! Shoo shoo!”

 

Capsules clash with each other

with their gritted teeth,

Animal Barbarity reigns.

What a ceaseless bedlam they wreck!

Dropping down

her ever-parched throat.

“Yes, I have gone crazy nuts

Girl gone bonkers! They call it, know?

and the repressed signs of whispering

its signifiers and signifieds

un-decoded stray ostracised

locked, glued and sandwiched

biting cold discomfort.”

 

Hurrah! The patriarchs won again?!

Yes, they were read and heard,

lauded and responded to for nothing

Those men who don’t walk the talk,

Those who read philosophy and chant holy,

worshipping a hundred thousand gods.

Those men and women whose very hands were blessed

by Gods and Goddesses who toured the campus!

Their very mouths catapult slur, timeless

misogynistic and homophobic badmouthing

every woman repulsively Left on campus.

Why hide masked and preach nought?

Not a drop of God in human blood

They perceive in us the dehumanised other.

 

“Humanity is dead, and so is Hindutva!”

The Right has killed it in what was Left

they have butchered, too,

the thinly-veiled aura of goddesses

desecrating us wholesome women,

extinguishing our inner luminescence:

“Minor-gradient, veiled women!”

Such is their strategic derogation

tagging us as their “abject” objects.

Ping pong

Ding-dong

Who is singing far: Faiz Ahmad Faiz songs?

Beat the drums harder and wilder

Let the sonorous gong garner

Justice amongst us.

 

Ping pong

Ding-dong

It’s so claustrophobic within,

a million molecules resist

their normative reconfiguration

from dust to dust, they have gone, mingled odd.

 

“Ping pong

Ding-dong

Kick me out for the love of no God.

This vortex is a vicious cycle,

and I am forced to dwell

along these untrodden paths

inhabited by Despair’s sole

spinning at the pivotal point,

the night before and after

the sexual assault.

Hopping betwixt matrices: life and death,

Un- becoming, my heels hurt

I want to fly away

Feather like betraying

the gravity upward: with no strings attached.”

“He, whoever touched

Grabbed, manhandled and pushed

the survivor away audaciously

into the remote dark fields,

fled pusillanimously abrupt!

Why? Because she raised her fierce voice

for SPARSH to be re-established?

The cell that awaits to cage

him and many of his kin behind,

whose utmost gracious presence,

whose shadowy concrete perverseness

barred shall come to clear daylight.”

 

Ping pong,

Ding-dong,

Sing us no song

for we miserably failed

resuming where we left off,

the protest still entails

nightmares and official brickbats

and flies, mosquitoes and bats,

sleepwalking, guarding and yawning,

the fraternity stands together

with their men and women: pure solidarity

lending women might and shoulder.

 

The “Eyes” are flashing on us all:

Repressive State Apparatus!

The Eyes in coded navy-blue walks, taunts and haunts

like ping pong, ding dong

fueling their enraged march.

About the author …

Naganandhini N.R. is a passionate literature student and has been a poet since her late teenage years. Her blog on WordPress is a testament to her consistency and dedication, an abode to more than one thousand and five hundred poems. Nandhini is a postgraduate of English literature and an aspiring research scholar. Her areas of interest include Memory Studies, Indian Mythology, Indian Philosophy and Digital Indian Graphic Narratives.

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