Amitava Kumar September 18, 1998

Tags: Unions , Nuclear , Freedom , Military , Pakistan , Gandhi

America when will you send your eggs to India?

href="/tag/war">war?

Go f--- yourself with your nuclear bomb.

India, I'm not Sanjay Gandhi I don't give a damn about making Marutis.

I will write poems about tyrants spilling blood in the streets.

India when will you be a playground for your children?

When will you celebrate Holi with red flags?

When will you remind the world of the dead in Bhopal?

When will you be worthy of a single landless peasant in Bihar?

India why are the songs of Bhikhari Thakur about in lean days?

India when will you stop sending your engineers to America?

I'm sick of the world's insane demands.

When can I appear on Doordarshan and shatter H.K.L. Bhagat's dark

glasses with my smile?

India after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.

Your ministers are too much for me.

You made me want to be poor.

There must be some other way to settle this argument.

Gaddar is in a prison even at home it's sinister.

Are you being sinister or is this a practical joke of the Home Ministry?

I'm trying to come to the point.

I refuse to give up my obsession.

India stop pushing I know what I'm doing.

India the gulmohar is blooming.

I haven't read the newspaper for months, everyday somebody is accused

of wild corruption.

India I feel sentimental about Telengana.

India I became a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry.

I sing songs at town squares every chance I get.

I sit in tea-shops for days on end and talk to strangers about

bringing change.

When I go to a basti we raise the cry "Halla Bol..."

My mind is clear that they are going to make trouble.

You should join me in reading Marx and Premchand.

The priests say the old order was perfectly alright.

I will not repeat the old half-truths and outright falsehoods.

I have revolutionary dreams and songs about a new world.

India I still haven't told you what you did to Manto when he did not

leave for Pakistan in '47.

I'm addressing you.

Are you going to let your emotional life be run by television?

I'm obsessed by television.

I watch it every day.

Its eye watches me every evening as I step inside my home.

I watch it with friends in a room in A.K. Gopalan Bhavan.

It's always telling us about the greatness of this country.

Cricketers are great. Movie stars are great. Everybody's great but us.

It occurs to me that I am India.

I could not be talking to myself when I say this.


Alisha sings she is "Made in India."

What happened to Mukesh singing "Mera joota hai Japani, Yeh patloon

Inglistani, Sir pe laal topi Rusi, phir bhi dil hai Hindustani?"

I'd better consider my national resources.

My national resources consist of ten glasses of tea our nukkad-natak

the fire in the stomach of my unemployed friends the exhaustion on

the faces of those productively employed who after work put in four

or more hours in rehearsals and street-performances.

I say nothing about the factories closed-down the busted trade unions

the millions who wake under the dying suns of flourescent pavement

lights.

I have abolished bonded labor in Delhi, dowry deaths is the next to go.

My ambition is to have Bertolt Brecht elected the head of each

gram-panchayat despite the fact that he does not belong to any caste.


India how can I write an epic poem in your television soap opera?

I will continue like J.R.D. Tata my plays are as patriotic as his

factories more so they're also for the working class.

India I will perform a street-play Rs. 50 apiece Rs. 400,550 down on

your Apna Utsavfestivals.

India put behind bars Bal Thackeray.

India save the Naxalites.

India Avtar Singh Pash must not die again.

India I am Shah Bano.

India when I was young my parents had organized mehfils in a small

garden with communist artists like Bhisham Sahni and Habib Tanvir

they had performed with the Indian Peoples Theater Association and

we started with Machine because in a factory goons fired on striking

workers who had wanted a tea-shop and a cycle-stand Comrade Mohan Lal

was reminded of the martyr Bhagat Singh and Bhishamji said that a new

link had at last been added to the freedom struggle the rhythm of

people's heartbeats had found expression once again.

India you don't really want to go to war.

India it's them bad Pakistanis.

Them Pakistanis them Pakistanis and them Chinese. And them Pakistanis.

The Pakistan wants to make eunuchs of us all. The Pakistan's

terrorist. She wants to take all our cricketers hostage.

Her wants to destroy our temples. Her needs a Quran-quoting Times of

India. Her wants our HMT watch factories in Karachi. Him military

government running our corner bania-stores.

That not godly. Chi! Him convert our untouchables. Him need the

support of all Indian Muslims.

Ha! Her make us all victims of missile attacks. Help.

India this is quite serious.

India this is the message being repeated by our rulers.

India is this right?

We better get down to the job.

It's true I don't want to train in shakhas of right-wing vigilantes

or join mobs intent on demolishing mosques, I'm a Muslim and

unwelcome anyway.

India I'm putting my unyielding shoulder to the wheel.