Politics

Childhood Friends

We haven’t met in years now
But have managed to stay in touch
Across decades
Across continents

We grew up together
Fighting for window seats 
On the bus to school
Playing cricket on Sundays
At…

Grist to the Mill

Everything is grist to the mill
Anything that can be
Is subverted to 
Further the cause

Everything is grist to the mill
The poor migrants on the road
Are used to ask for 
The supreme court’s…

Justitia

Ranjan, Ranjan, Ranjanda
How I wonder what you are
Up above the world so high
Were you not the C J I?

And you are flying higher now
In the Upper House: Holy gau
They say, it’s a quid pro quo
Why do they malign…

Otherwise reasonable

Otherwise reasonable people
Jumped with joy
When they heard about Kashmir
Saying, Now things will become normal

Prophets

Thucydides said it in Greece long ago
And down the ages
It has been proven true
“The strong do what they can
And the weak suffer what they must”

Common Ground

Positions are taken
And words are spoken
Both For and Against
With a certain shrillness

If only we could think
That the other
Is like us
Very much like us
Only, on the other side of the fence
We may…

Division

My brother’s face

Elie Wiesel has borne witness
So that the dead do not die twice
Once in fact and once in the forgetting
Urvashi Butalia has written unflinchingly of Partition
And Manto, of course, Manto