O Babasaheb
Twentieth march, nineteen twenty seven
As you drank deeply.
From your cupped hands
The water of Chavdar lake,
We learned
That united
We can win back our human rights.
If the earth belongs to us
How can the lake not be ours?
Why do they keep us away from our lake?
As the questions baffled us
Our eyes suddenly opened!
A lake open to dogs, cats, cattle
Even to swine
Is forbidden to human beings
Who look every bit human!
We did not know,
Who first set us apart.
Who was it
The builder of the wall
That separated man from man?
As you drank deeply
From your cupped hand
The water of Chavdar lake ,
The wall broke down,
A whole community,
Like the water balked by a dam,
Rushed out to join the ocean of humanity!
A new age was born.
O Babasaheb,
The first sip of water you drank
Quenched our thirst of ages.
We learned the taste of life.
We can never forget you,
For your memory lingers
On each step we ascend,
O Babasaheb!
It is silent, my friends
There is a word
Which when uttered
Shatters the tongue into a thousand pieces
Trapped in the smoke-clouds
Of some rocket-launching pad.
This silence – our silence!
And truth that emerges from it
Struts about in the street
In broad daylight
Without a stitch on !
Like chaste,pious women
Casting furtive glances at it,
Like the daydreams of maidens,
Our poetry too is silent, my friends!
Here
Abandoning their boats on the landing
The fishermen have gone home.
The evening mist
Spreads on the river
Like a loner’s grief.
The coconut palms have stopped all movements
And relapsed into a restful silence.
The old pensioners, leaning on the walking sticks,
Rise from the benches.
The wave of birds which just passed overhead
Is perhaps the last.
How long shall this bridge stand
Planting its legs in the river?
If it collapses some day,
This river, which flows between two villages,
Will come to know the distance that separates them.
But whom shall I tell this?
Whom shall I convince? For here…
Like a raw seetaphal
The half moon stares at me from behind.
Perhaps it is listening to my monologue!
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