Table of Contents
They Faded Away
Dr. Radha Debroy
New Delhi, India
For days, her ravaged body hung from the stairs,
Her spirit in a land far away;
Her dead eyes watched the comings and goings
A mute witness, of lives fading.
She was mute, she could not say
The nightly daily gnawing away
Of her breasts, her body, her soul
All she did was await death,
to leave the hell that was ‘home’
In its own strange way.
Hunger, fed with assaults and beatings,
Thirst, from gashes bleeding.
She had no voice, She had no mind -
A silent shell for carnal feeding.
A ‘Home’ of her own or whatever it was,
Some watery rice, with price to pay;
To every electrician, peon, president
Paid, by sex with the inmates in stay.
Went on for ages
This mindless torture,
Pregnancy beaten out of their wombs,
By women no less, with hearts beating,
One might say.
On and on the frenzied feeding,
Of silent, mute, disabled prey.
One bird down and two bird down and
One by one, they faded away.
(This poem is based on an NGO, Anjali)
Photo by Dr. Radha Debroy
Massacre
Sunil Sharma
Mumbai, India
Returning,
I see—
Stumps of fallen trees,
Along the shoulder of the street being widened,
For the better flow of the cars;
No guilty evidence left or trace of blood,
Under the marching bulldozers,
With no conscience;
Corpses of green trees,
Rotting in the dusty air, largely
Unmourned in a city,
Occupied with making money;
But,
Like every massacre,
Its ghosts will return to haunt.
Photo by Fouqia Wajid
A Feminist Dream
Pooja Sharma Rao
Hyderabad, India
Some day men (most of them)
would understand
gender as a mere
biological accident;
They would
see a soul
and a mind
beyond the cleavage;
They will rework
their dictionaries
to accept that
“No”, means no;
They would renounce
the power to decide
‘right’ and ‘wrong’
and make choices for her;
Be creative to exclude
mothers and sisters
from their
choicest abuses;
The ‘other’ would
be not more
not less
just different and equal;
Some day
men would not
be scared
to have a feminist dream !
Photo by Jayanta Deb
Religion
Irshad Kamil
Mumbai, India
Translated by Tasveer
Religion of Fragrance…Only Colours can paint
Religion of Colors…Just the Dyer
Dyer’s Religion…Only the Cloth can feel
And Cloth’s…Only Cotton
Cotton’s Religion…the Farm can ascertain
And Farm’s…The Farmer
The Farmer’s religion…A Trader only can calculate
And Trader’s…The Money
Money’s Religion…Greed
Religion of Greed…Only Resilience can read
Religion of Resilience…Only Sweat can breathe
Sweat’s…The forehead
Religion of forehead…On a worshipper’s bowed- head can only be read
Religion of A bowed-head…The Door of the beloved can interpret
DOOR’S
Doors have no RELIGION
Photo by Manaska Mukhopadhyay