Here’s a tribute for Gauri Lankesh, in verse, by Kabir, in Different Truths.
I am a pen
Many use me for pleasure
By writing on domestic islands
Few use me to erupt the island
Making the civilians peek into the outer world
Del Carnegie wrote for the initiation
Plato kept thinking of how to write to indulge
The words into the five percent part of brain
Copernicus wrote and got the gift of beheading
Galileo wrote without even knowing
That the showcase won’t make him stay
Pansare wrote on the deforested population
Next morning faced the barbaric bullet
Dabholkar tried to break the sleep of millions
But the jingling sleep was too deep
Which didn’t even stop the bullet
Even when dialogues of intolerance rose
Black ink drove making the speakers feel the shame
Gauri stood against the worst phase
Against the worst distance in a country clock
The next night the door to her home opened
It smiled for a brief time, welcoming her
Pen in her bag impatiently waiting to inscribe
Another written sketch of a modern yet blunt India
But she never knew that she won’t witness the smile
She won’t be able to hold the pen again
When a bullet passed her charming beauty
When it broke off the sleep of her followers
And made the dictators sleep in peace
Legends will be they called when they talk over tweets
But here everything vanished deliberately
For the smile, today is on their face
I am in deep worry as I am in that phase
In that area of the country clock
Where the idea of dissent is dying like a moth
But I still hope that the pen will refill itself
To make Gauri live again.
©Kabir Deb
Photo from the Internet
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