Skip to main content

Coward



They hailed him a great nationalist
when he stopped writing politics
and turned to blogging about food and fad.
He had started donning a waistcoat of a particular cut.

Please, don’t insult me calling me a cultural leader:
His heart pleaded, silently.
What culture am I to lead?
Grabbing, raping and lynching?
Culture of hate that masquerades as patriotism?

When the TV channels were busy finding
accolades for the political leaders,
the cultural leader was forming
WhatsApp groups for neo nationalists.

The arrests of honest people didn’t disturb
the cultural leader’s devotion to WhatsApp.
Nor did the disappearance of hearts from writers.
Nor did the death of poetry on the wayside.
Nor did the rape of justice on the highway.

He knew the truth, however,
in the core of his heart.
That he was nothing more than a coward.



This article will throw light on the poem. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
37 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart
13 comments
Read more

Fantasy

  My nights are generally haunted by nightmares. Amorphous creatures who pretend to be benign lead me on familiar paths and leave me in alien territories. I had a surprise last night, however. I was abandoned in some kind of a wonderland where everyone smiled like angels who were carrying some happy message to some Virgin Mary somewhere. Yet another virgin birth. The dream left me in a half-awake state. I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I knew I was fantasising. And I found it all quite amusing. Here are some of those delightful fantasies of semi-wokeness. One All the money in the world’s banks, all banks included, is distributed equally to all the adults in the world. Ambani, Adani, Advani, Kolani, Indrani, Malini, Shalini… everyone on earth now has equal wealth. And everyone is told by some mysterious angel that they will always have the same wealth as anyone else on earth as long as they don’t misuse it. If they misuse it – on drugs, for example – then the amount spent won’t be replen
10 comments
Read more

Terror Tourism 2

Terror Tourism 1 in short : Jacob Martin Pathros is a retired school teacher in Kerala. He has visited most countries and is now fascinated by an ad which promises terror tourism: meet the terrorists of Dantewada. Below is the second and last part of the story. Celina went mad on hearing her husband’s latest tour decision. “Meet terrorists? Touch them? Feel them?” She fretted and fumed. When did you touch me last ? She wanted to scream. Feel me, man , she wanted to plead. But her pride didn’t permit her. She was not a feminist or anything of the sort, but she had the pride of having been a teacher in an aided school for 30-odd years and was now drawing a pension which funded a part of their foreign trips. “I’m not coming with you on this trip,” Celina said vehemently. “You go and touch the terrorists and feel them yourself.” Celina was genuinely concerned about her husband’s security. Why did he want to go to such inhuman people as terrorists? Atlas Tours, the agency which b
7 comments
Read more

Women as Victims or Survivors

Book Title: The Blue Scarf and other stories Author: Anu Singh Choudhary Translator: Kamayani Sharma Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 Pages: 188 There is no doubt that the Indian social system is overtly patriarchal and hence a lot of women endure restrictions of all sorts. There are exceptions like the matrilineal tribes of the Northeast. The 12 short stories in this volume by Anu Singh Choudhary focus on some women from the patriarchal societies of India, particularly North India. Originally written in Hindi, the stories have been translated quite effortlessly by Kamayani Sharma though the book does show a few signs of poor proofreading. The very first story, First Look , shows us the rising aspirations of a few women from a remote village and the futility of those aspirations in a world where even marriage is a business deal. “With this deal, we’re interested only in maximizing profits for both parties,” The boy’s father says. But the girl’s family can’t ever tou
2 comments
Read more