I dream of being in my classroom
day and night fettered behind
the strong iron beams
of my tiny solitary prison cell.

I see you, talk to you
and hug you by the force
of my frail and challenged life
in my unchained mind’s eye
as the desire for freedom
flows through the sinews
and veins of my bloodstream
even as I am caged
far away from you.

Teaching is my forte,
breath and life, you know
I embraced literature
for it clasps us with
our troubled histories,
philosophies and economics
of pangs of pain, tears,
fears and hopes
for a bright new day.

The cage of lies,
seditious clauses of law
and conspiratorial confabulations
confine and keep me away
from your intimate and critical
engagement with knowledge
and warm affection for the liberty
of the trampled earth.

Go Shouting Aloud in the Streets
O friends,
the hearts of my heart!

When so much of love is
deeply hidden in your hearts,
why don’t you break
your silence at this
moment of crisis?

Why do you lose
all momentous times
every time?

If such a burden
weighs down your eyelids,
why don’t you sing
of love this dark night?
This isn’t the time to sleep.

Listen to me, my friends,
Kabir always says,

To declare your love, you should go
shouting
aloud in the open streets.

(For Varalakshmi, 4 July 2019)

On that day
when Rohit Vemula
hanged himself
and declared:
‘I can’t be reduced to my identity’,
my heart missed its beats.

On that day
when Perumal Murugan
announced:
‘The writer in me is dead’,
I was afflicted with sleep apnea.

On that day
when Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
pronounced:
‘The Adivasi Will not Dance’,
my muscles contracted.

On that day
when Hadiya
standing on her ground
in the courtroom was compelled to
beg:
‘I want freedom’,
I ceased to breathe
in my prison cell.

(For Manjeera, 25 December 2017)

The prison doctor
issued verbal pills
to hegemonize my pain:
‘The prison didn’t choose you,
you did the prison;
life means suffering any way;
let the pain be.’

Life in prison
is an ointment tube;
the gel exhausts
but the germs of the dermatitis
proliferate.

The prison’s gendarme
walks the guard
along the corridors of lashed out
sentences like the elite master
of a smart city walks
his dog in the mornings
on the pavements strewn with shit
preaching:
‘Security is next to Godliness.’

Hope and despair
vacillate between
the changes of benches
at the High Tables of Justice.
The prisoner lives
a life of a beetle
performing penance
in supine topsy-turvy position
waving his legs and whiskers
against the dark high ceiling.

(For Manjeera, 17 July 2017)

The story of the Exodus
repeats endlessly in every aeon.

Humans move crisscrossing
the globe in search of living
their lives ever since the first
Homo Sapien set her foot
out of Africa.

The new king Herod
of the new Dream Land
has decreed to kill
the children who came in crossing the
borders
or separate them
from their parents.

Separated from their
moms and dads, the chained
little souls smile at the shining
toy democracy, its real guns
and dreadful bombs.

The caged children laugh
at the mighty Empire,
the Superpower that casts
its net far and wide.

The cries of the collective childhood
damning the guns of the super
democracy reverberates through the
planet.
The mad power built
on a million genocides
its scared of its own history.
The clay feet of the super beast
begin to dissolve.

‘Every living thing on the face
of the earth was wiped out…’*
But there is no Noah
or his Ark in sight.
There is no flood of the Apocalypse
and no signs of the Rainbow
of the Covenant God
had made with Noah.

There are only the smiles
of the children enveloping
the resurrecting earth.

Child Christ has moved
away from Bethlehem
to Bastar or Palestine
or Kashmir or perhaps
returned to Africa.

Historians are in search
of his footprints.

* from the Bible, ‘Genesis’, Old Testament.
(For Manjeera, 12 July 2018)

(After mother came to see me at the mulakat at the prison window on 14th November 2017)

When you came to see me,
I couldn’t see your face
from the fibreglass window.
If you glanced at my crippled body,
you could truly believe that I was still alive.

Mother, cry not for my absence at home.

When I was at home
and in the outside world,
I had many friends.
When I am incarcerated in this prison’s
Anda cell,
I have gained many more friends
across the globe.

Mother, despair not for my failing health.

When you couldn’t afford a glass of milk
in my childhood,
you fed me with your words
of strength and courage.
At this time of pain and suffering,
I am still strong with what you
had fed me.

Mother, lose not your hope.

I realised that jail is not death,
it is my rebirth, and I will soon return
home
to your lap that nurtured me
with hope and courage.

Mother, fear not for my freedom.

Tell the world,
my freedom lost
is freedom gained for the multitudes
as everyone who comes to stand with me
takes the cause of the wretched of the
earth
wherein lies my freedom.

*Mother, I hope that someone translates
this letter in Telugu for you.
Mother, pardon me for writing this in a foreign tongue that you don’t understand. What can I do? I am not allowed to write in the sweet language you taught me in my infancy in your lap.-Your child with love.

The Mahatma
at the main gates
stuck on the wall
with a cane in hand
cries out in silence:
‘Repent the sins of your crime.’

A newly admitted prisoner
shouts fighting his tears back:
‘My trial is still pending.’

Bhagat Singh
flattened on the wall
inside the red gate
like leaves and moths
between the pages
of the notebook
in my school days, welcomes:
Inquilab Zindabad.

Six prisoners
with freshly dished out
life sentences
marching for mulaiza*
greet him with with salutes:
Zindabad, Zindabad.

The drying earth
of the early March
prison gardens
mockingly smiles
at the new inmates.

The roses
bloom ebulliently
sucking profusely
from the vessels
of the convicted slave labour.

The gallows
hang everywhere
from the branches
of the outgrown colonial trees.
The dilapidated stumpy walls
make prisons within prisons
in the medieval barracks.

The food eats
the prisoners
in tasty meals.

Silence
rustles
like fallen leaves
tossing on the dusty back
of the deadened leviathan.

After lock-up,
walking up and down
behind the cage’s rusty bars
every prisoner
appears to be a wild beast.

A high-ranking gendarme
of the Maximum Security Prison
enters like a nuclear submarine
with a vulture’s sharp eyes
while another dashes out
like a nuclear-tipped missile.
Both of them wear
empty hats of prison reforms.

The hard-earned books
in my cell
stare at me.
I am frightened to read them
by opening my eyes.

*The practice of freshly admitted
prisoners being checked, identified and
interviewed by the prison officers every
morning.

(For Manjeera, 10 March 2017)

The feisty poet walks up and down
measuring the adjacent yard of gallows
as Faiz did five decades ago.

Bhima-Koregaon ignites history.
A world of silence
is smitten into smithereens.

Poona was the capital of Chitpavans.
Once again, their last bastion
raises its ugly fangs.
The ghosts of the Peshwai lash their
whips.
Nana orders,
Ghasiram the Kotwal chains humanity
with red-hot iron balls.
Spitoons are hung
into the necks of the earthly hearts.

Here, once the Mahatma
planted a mango tree,
and nudged Ambedkar
to acquiescence in a war of peace.

A lamp burns everyday
on the tree’s chabutara
as the tourists come and go
in silent obeisance.
The octogenarian poet gazes on
the shadows of its branches
swaying on the walls of the deathly yard.

A ruthless streak of terror
is unleashed outside the high stone walls.
Yerawada rises again.

The shadows of Poona’s tyranny
cast across the stone walls of the nation.
Memories abound
the tracks of history.

Socrates was given a glass of hemlock.
Galileo was walked upto the gallows
for mapping the skies
defying the sun going around the earth.
Hikmet was incarcerated
for the Turkish soldiers
read his poems hidden
under their pillows in army barracks.
Faiz almost faced the death sentence
for he sang paeans to labouring hands.

Déjà vu...Déjà vu…
Seeing the poet handcuffed
and walking through the the gates
of an imprisoned court of law,
a dazed scribe of eminence
cried, heartbroken
tears rolling down his cheeks.
Decades have passed.

Now again, farcically enough,
history repeats itself.

His poetry smells of the soil.
In it, the oceans churn;
the whirling cyclonic
Eastern winds roar;
the thunderous Western monsoon clouds
carry torrents of rains.
The collective voice speaks
through his nimble words.
His lullabies hum children
into dreams of Future’s visual frames.

His words echo
in the great mountains,
voluptuous forests,
recalcitrant boulders of the soil,
and the resistance of the earth
flows in tiny streams
through the crevices of the jagged
rocks of the Deccan Plateau
gathering into the mighty rivers.

It’s poetry, stupid.
It’s stupendous poetry.
It doesn’t need weapons
to smelt break the iron heels of history.
His poetry has winged seeds
that float over to every shore
sailing on a gentle breeze of love
and embrace the earth’s moisty crust.
The ocean is his voice.

(For Manjeera, May Day 2019)

He smiles,
he laughs
through the bars
to shake me up from my early morning
dreams
with a hug
of a good morning
clanking a huge bunch of keys
into the cage of my life sentence.

A dark blue Nehru topi
on the scalp,
brutal khaki robes
from the top to the bottom
girded with a snake-like
black belt around the waist,
he stands and sways
in front of my sleepy
half-opened eyes
like a devil
guarding the gates of hell.

He appears like an apparition
from an enemy’s army
but with a warm smile
and friendly face,
checking if one were alive or dead
as the day breaks.
Counting each live head.

He opens and closes
the locks of the iron gates
a thousand times a day
without expressing pain
or complaint.

He demands no tips
or favours
for his untiring services.
He calls the unattending doctor
repeatedly on his wireless set
patiently
when I am sick and unconscious.

He hides
his own sad stories
lending his patient
and compassionate ear
to the voices of the chained
melancholic souls
never bothering for their
crime or innocence.

He listens,
debates,
and damns
the evil forces in power
with scorn
and a frown on his brow
when the bosses
are away into their offices.

He stomps
on the dark steps
of the devilish state
all night long
with his eagle eyes
of surveillance.

He comes from
the deepest well
of our social misery.
He has no time for his beloved ones
languishing outside the gates.
Imprisoned by his duties
day and night
behind the high four walls
and closed gates,
he spans away
a lifetime in prison
for a pittance.
The cursed souls come and go,
but he is a permanent prisoner,
he has no holidays
on holy days and weekends.

He is a nun,
a nurse,
and a priest,
a pious perseverer
of patience.

A tireless slave
sticking everlastingly
to the bars of my cage,
he is a friend,
a cousin, and a comrade.
He is the guard,
and the guardian
of my life’s sentence,
phrases, words and syllables.

(Written to Sanjay Kak, 1 May 2017)