Poetry

By

Ananya S Guha

Mindful Of Questions…

Father you have seen a world war

or at least heard of it

you have seen a country

doggedly asking for Independence

you must have heard fiery speeches

of Nehru, or Gandhi, I wonder what was

the fervour then, when you were a student

shackled by another country, a new one

in the womb? How did it feel like an alien

in one’s own country or did it, as you read

wrote in a foreign tongue?

What was the poverty like?

Worse than today, or were the poor

so suppressed that no one knew them?

I am talking about seventy to eighty years back.

Would you say things have changed in this country?

Are the tears of the poor washed into oceanic hopes?

Or are we still waiting like Godot to summarize eternal truths

although incoherently? I wish I knew Father as progress is

something I don’t understand amidst filth and hovels, amidst

table talk of nationalism, tolerance and justice.

I have been taught to love a country awakening out of manacles.

Were you also taught the same thing?

Did you not witness the Noakhali riots, Hindu Muslim animosity and price for freedom?

Today as you are not here, do you see the same dead, the same corpses,

the same blood?

Ananya S Guha

Ananya S Guha was born and brought up in Shillong, North East India. He has seven collections of poetry and his poems have been published worldwide. They have also been featured in several anthologies. He is also a columnist, critic and editor. He now is a Regional Director at the Indira Gandhi National Open University and holds a doctoral degree on the novels of William Golding.