Jihad

Khaja
Jihad


I’ve been watching everything
I’ve been noticing your every move
With wet eyes I’m still searching
for the corpse that floated away in the stream of Sixth December
Now though no foot can make humans human
I’m watching the process of converting them into rocks and maniacs

Al-kabir gherao
That stood between my starving stomach and my morsel of food
The flagpole that landed like a trident in the Hubli Idgah grounds
"Madhura" that’s trampled beneath your Kautilya brain
I’ve been watching

I thought Indivaram was the light that came to my house
Rajeevam was the perfumed fragrance that exuded my heritage
Paraded them promptly on my head
You too became Vamana’s feet
after walking over the bouquets of my dreams
Opening and seeing the pyjama of my faith and then

After slashing me brutally, after putting on tilak with my blood
I am left here only with bougainvillea citizenship
Finding nothing else to demolish
you must perhaps be irritated—impatient
just once let your hawk eyes pass over the corners of the century
on the banks of the Yamuna is visible
the moonlight palace that some crazy grandfather of ours
constructed, converting his love for grandma into a froth of milk

On the mound of Delhi—like planting a piece from the eastern sky
Is visible the Raj durbar as if panted in blood
And still for your religious arrogance
Qutub minar Charminar Buland Darwaza
Jumma Masid Mecca Masid Maharaja Palace become my traces
and keep pricking—keep hurting
even when you demolished, when you slashed throats we did not questioned

but—you splitting the country into pieces
you rearing animals in villages I cannot stand
you corpse-fucker—
for the rejuvenation of corpses is corpses are unavoidable—
then it’s inevitable
the first corpse will be yours

I have been watching everything

Roots

Khaja
Roots


I am looking back

Yes! Standing on the threshold of this twenty first century
I am looking back
I am fondling the scars of my pas injuries
By turning the pages of time one by one
Like reading Arabic books
Washing the worn out fossils of truth with tears
I am digging for my mother root

Breaking the rocks and mountains
I gave a shape to this earth and a passage to this water
without any laboratories and experiments
I was the primitive scientist who discovered that
rubbing two stones produces fire
from caves to huts
from signs to script
from tree to carved houses
I led the man by my little finger

I was the one who used burnt bricks in Kalibangan
I was the bloody Sindhu that flowed out of the massacre by horsed barbarians
I was the corpse of the orphan that shook Siddratha
I was the arama hung from Pushyamitra’s scared thread
it was me who could not recognize my changed face
day before yesterday a dasya yesterday a chandala
today as my millions of injuries are my witness I am a sayibu
in fact I am a dalit

when you entrusted me with the protection of village
I thought that was my livelihood
I could never imagine that you will burry me there itself
I thought it was true when you bluffed that caste discrimination
was to safeguard dharma
I could not think that you will banish me as an outcast
for your institutionalized selfishness
how many dark centuries…….how many bloody centuries?
Darkness all around…. blinding darkness…revenge…attack…
look here, only after this sayibu touched me on my shoulder
did my fear disappear

when these people with scared threads called me a demon
and attributed fangs horns and tails that I did not have
he came and declared me a human being
when the brahmins here closed the temple gates
he spread janimas in the masjid for me
when the dal eaters here closed their nose looking at me
badnamaz – he embraced me like the fragrance of perfume

I forgot my mother all these days
I forgot my blood forgot my roots
in a system where survival is impossible without brahmanisation
I too became a bearded Brahman and asked my elder brother to move away
considered my younger brother inferior….

but after this excavation after this rethinking
I am going to step in to my father’s house
I going to receive my parent’s heritage
by the Vedas that injured me all these years
by history
I am declaring that I belong to the majority
Though I am sayibu by religion I assert that a dalit by caste

Now I am marching to Delhi