Where did our dignity go?

Where did our dignity go?

I saw it once in an Englishman’s movie, so it must be true

that once we were noble and driven.

Perhaps it is hidden under a lump of complacence

rotting on our streets with the garbage

your maid threw there this morning
so that your house could start the day clean.

Perhaps it made it down the rubble that we call a pavement,

hesitating on the corner, too scared to cross

like the old man waiting for someone to slow down

and give him enough time to hobble over to the other side of the road.

Perhaps the price was too high

and it couldn’t pay, so it couldn’t get admission.

Perhaps it was the wrong caste, or no caste at all,
or perhaps it came barefoot,

and a young mother told it to get off the swings

that are meant for better-dressed children.

Perhaps it lost hope and drank itself into oblivion

like the middle-aged daily-wager passed out on the median

under a statue of Dr Ambedkar.

Perhaps it is low on a to-do list

and will always be set aside for tomorrow.

Perhaps it was a New Year’s resolution,

and we all know what happens to them.

Perhaps it is asleep,
or pretending to be asleep,

safe under the covers
so that the monsters cannot come out to get it.

Perhaps it does not know its own potential

like a woman kept indoors for her own safety.

Perhaps it cannot survive on its own,

like a child who needs a caring parent.

Perhaps the parent is us.

Perhaps it died, but 

we are a nation fond of reincarnation, so

perhaps it is wombed in our skulls,

waiting to be born.

By Nazu Tonse

Rabindranath Revisited

Where minorities fear

and farmers hang high

Where criminals run free, and sometimes for election

Where our land has been stripped and poisoned

and then fertilised with the blood of little girls

Where lies are so loud

they muffle the truth

Where a tired hungry child

stretches its arm towards an air-conditioned car at the traffic light

Where the clear stream of reason

Is clogged with the bullet-ridden corpses of those who dared

to speak up against dead habit

Where minds are held tight by theologies and mythologies

that divide one nation into us and them

Out of this hell of hypocrisy, my People,

let our country awake.

By Nazu Tonse