“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.