Through 100 pages of 'Poetry as Evidence', Outlook presents a selection of poems and verses that have moved us, and we feel these serve as evidence of our bleak times and lives. The poem below is the 72nd from the series.
All we came for
Was earning a wage, Sahab,
From the village to the city
Away from our own
It was just a question of hunger
What did we know
That this city
Nourished on our blood and sweat
Will one day
Become a cannibal
Rather than giving some scraps of sustenance
It will brutally gorge on
The very bodies that sustain it
Today, I’m leaving.
Exiled from my own country,
Forced to migrate
Thirsty, hungry, barefoot
Bare…
Returning to my
Own home village
Bearing my children
On my broken shoulders.
The same way that
We have eternally borne
The sordid weight of your
Savage caste system
Without an outward protest
But remember
If I survive
I will doubtlessly tell
My guiltless offspring
That when it was the most
Gruelling hour of our lives
When we were waging war
Against our hunger
Suddenly then
This country turned its back on us.
I’m leaving, recording
In the archive of the future
The helpless stare of enslavement
In my children’s and my eyes
And that homicidal history
Of our everyday violence and death
Partition
No; here the partition
Isn’t of a country
Or a religion
But the partitions
Of a country within a country
Inside cities
Villages partitioned, inside hearts
Privileges and pestilence partitioned
Inside Caste
Master and slave partitioned.
—Translated from Hindi by Nikhil Pandhi
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Poonam Tushamad, Delhi
(Poonam Tushamad?is a Dalit- feminist writer, poet, academic and activist who is the author of several publications, including Madari (2019) and?Hindi Dalit Sahitya Mein Jantantrik Mulya: Ek Adhyayan?(2022))