Artwork by Sonaksha Iyengar
For all of India’s students fighting CAA and NRC
you, student of resistance, unfurling a banner thrice your chest
*
you, forming a fence with the unwavering flag of your body
*
the blue in your long line of blood, lines of blood
streaking your skin penetrated by the state's bullet
*
the nerve in your eye holding back its water in the face of tear gas
*
and the whip from their stick, and the whip from their stick,
and the stick you duck, the one you couldn't, and the bruise
that will darken tomorrow
*
Tomorrow is another sponsored history textbook
that will white-out your name, this day, it's souls and slogans
sab taaj uchale jaenge
sab takht girae jaenge
*
My forehead kisses the floor of your courage
five times a day, and six and seven.
*
There is no internet shutdown, no cut off, no curfew
than can stop a prayer that begins and ends with no.
*
may the static of your bullhorn enlarge
your spirit-voices, deafen the ears
of those parliamentary beasts in murderous thrones
*
I imagine them muting you when you are on TV,
them licking their fingers at dinner
as they wipe clean our democracy morsel by morsel
*
there you are, and you, and you, challenging
our cold capital sky with portraits of Ambedkar and Gandhi
I worship you as I do
churchgoers who hold up their children to the blankness above us
*
tonight I wrap myself in your muslin message --
painted with inquilab in all our recognized and unrecognized tongues
*
weave a rosary with your trembling voice, your lost voice,
your repeating chorus
jo Hitler ki chaal chalega, woh Hitler ki maut marega
*
you, who have stirred again, the melancholy asleep in Faiz's Subh-e-Azadi
*
and you, dear Faiz, I beg you for a new war cry
*
you are all my gods. you are all citizens
in the cathedral of my faith-finding heart
*
each of you, a country
in my 37.2 trillion celled body,
the only country
I want to wake up in