Long Live Revolution

 

I often wonder what can make a human to go on an un-ending hunger strike
They must simply be lunatics
Looking at those men, I soon corrected myself
That hunger for freedom and for equality
Is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
When a rich man’s shampoo has more fruits
than a poor man’s plate
a revolution is un-deniable

The man who goes on a hunger strike has a soul
He is moved by the soul
And moved by the justice of his cause
The cause he can live and die for
His spirit has wings and is audacious
And there is no weapon more powerful on this earth
Than a human spirit on fire

That hunger strike that broke many men amongst the men
I saw a man starve to death in front of my eyes
It was a sight to scare the bravest of braves
But no men cried
Real men of character stand by their conviction
Even to the very death
One physical body left
But the moral courage entered the blood of the remaining
I was there I was awake

I saw their dried and swollen eyes
I saw the drought-ridden throats
I saw butchered bodies and blood clots
I saw the speechless rage
I saw the tired but fierce eyes
I smelled the air of sweat, blood and rebel
I was there I was awake

Courage I learned is not the absence of fear
I saw these men feeling afraid
I saw them conquer fear
I saw them triumph over it
I was there I was awake

I saw the cry and the agony
I saw those battered backs on the ice slabs
I saw the rebellion becoming strong with every single hit
I saw every single day of those cunning 116 days of hunger strike
I heard ‘Mera rang de basanti chola, maiye rang de (Colour my cloak saffron, o motherland) like a chant
I was there I was awake

I saw raging wolves and their ugliness
I saw every savage attempt to break these men
To stop their hunger strike
I saw an establishment’s ego on its knees
I witnessed the un-broken human spirit
I heard ‘Inquilab zindabad’ (long live the revolution)

I wondered again what could make these men go through such atrocities, unless they are lunatics
What conviction and belief can be stronger?
Than the desire to live
But then lunatics, poets and lovers are something else
They are made of same stuff
To show the world how to live not fearing death
How to give their life smilingly for a free morning
How to embrace death as a poetic expression of life
I saw blood boiling in the men like the ember of freedom
I saw every ounce of blood spent igniting the spirit of revolution

I was there I was awake
I was dying from within
When I saw young ‘Bhagat Singh’

I’m Massih (The Hangman)

(Hanged Bhagat singh, Sukhdev & Rajguru on 23rd March 1931, Lahore Central jail)

P.s: We give too much Importance to birth, which should be rather shifted to death. An otherwise un-known boy born to un-known partners, but when and the way he died, every mother wants their child to be like him.

Bhagat Singh an idol, is now only reduced to just a symbol on a t-shirt, nothing more. May be he deserves more? at least a symbol of a learned spirit, an intellect who could challenge the status quo on the merits of conviction, knowledge and power of argument.

Merciless criticism and Independent thinking are two pillars of any revolutionary thinking