(December, 2019)
All is not lost.
The young still feel the sting
Of oppression.
Setting aside the quiescent
Counsel of terrified time,
They rise, singing a defiant rhyme.
Women, dragged by the hair,
Lead the march of assertion
Against the strategy of fear.
While the batons of state
Sought the men for correction,
Women in hijab shielded the men.
A new dauntless beauty was born,
Promising a conjoint dawn.
From Arunachal to Chennai,
From Punjab to the Hooghly
The roar goes up—“we
Will not be Zion, we will not be Nazi.”
The perfidious who seek to sunder
confront an unsought wonder:
those that the new law has included
For nefarious favour march
To embrace the excluded.
Gandhi smiles from the sky
At the tenacity of his legacy.
Young women and men
Lay the foundation
Of a second struggle for freedom
And common love.
Let the failed elders now
Take heed, relinquish petty
Feuds, and come to the table
Of emancipation that the
Young have seamlessly laid
And sanctified with fresh blood.
Let there be no going back now.
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