Silent Gods – A Political Poem
Silent Gods
My country houses many gods
Every corner, every turn yields another deity
They loom large, they lurk in every breath
Bow to the stage, pray to the machine, lights for money,
Engrave your worries on nimbu-mirchi
The names of gods adorn many doorways
Etched into varna locks, no entry, no exit
Branded as lines of destiny, bhagya, dharma, karma
Many gods look on in corridors & stairwells here
Inscribed on walls everywhere, don’t spit there
Silence! in the name of god
My country is spoken for by many gods
Intoning in the voices of godmen
Prescriptions for sautan mukti, santan prapti,
parivarik sukh, koi bhi dukh,
dushman se chutkara, naukri, talak,
Work is worship, annadatta is bhagya vidhata,
protected by shani kavach,
Underwritten by the gods,
religious marks are
statistics of conversions
numbers become weapons
Silence! as we chant
My country was birthed by many gods
They held scalpels & botched the surgery of land in 1947
Kashmir, Lucknow, Hyderabad
Once again, the prayers chant,
In 1971, carving up aamar shonar bangla
Try it another time – Godhra 2002
Tripura burning in 2021
So many saviours but no healing in sight
Silence! in the operating theatre
My country is painted by many-hued gods
Blue stars rising over a golden temple in 1984
Saffron flag draped over a green dome in 1992
The gods now autograph every union
Drawing lines between love marriage & love jihaad
Now marriage acts are legislations in religion
Love is a crime, art censorable, life dispensable
But the name of God is unerasable
Silence! as we pray
My country is a battlefield of many gods
Every avatar is a brand new sword
Editing, splicing language, ritual, geography
Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, Maratha
And in these histories written in blood
Forgotten seeds & weeds chafe & burst forth
Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Tulu, Konkani, Telugu, Odiya, Bangla
Ask what about us?
Silence! at the editing desk
My country has many people & even more gods
God is the purveyor of a vote bank
carved on half a billion Indian wombs
It’s cheaper to kill than to birth
Yet our population explodes
because bhagwan ki deyn is another mouth to feed
Those who die become martyrs and with enough prayers, new gods
Holy are the names, sacred even their tainted legacies
Polytheism in the name of a single truth,
my country is cremated, buried, eaten alive,
sent down the Ganga, thrown over lines of control
Silence! One minute of silence for the dear departed.
My country swears allegiance to many gods
We even birth & adopt new gods
Capitalism prayers to the deities of trade & progress
Currency over identity,
from rice bags to bank notes
We are demonitised,
we are privatized,
we are owned by industry & devotion
Silence! in the treasury
My country speaks of many gods
A country is a conversation, a communion of many ideas
Of self, of belonging, of community
But there are thorns in these words
Bloodlust in the names, promises camouflage swords
The people pray only for hope for another day
Rain, food, sleep, breath
Any name, any colour, any tongue, any flag will do
Cremation prayers in villages, ambulance sirens in cities
When media stories are written in blood flowing down streets
Bharat Bhagya Vidhata stands quiet
Silence! As we bow to our silent gods.
truly grateful for this poem….thanks Ramya…
@Kapil: Thank you for the prompt, the conversations and for reading.
my fav lines
• Etched into varna locks, no entry, no exit• Branded as lines of destiny, bhagya, dharma, karma
• my country houses many gods
Every corner, every turn yields another deity
They loom large, they lurk in every breath
• So many saviors but no healing in sight
• My country is a battlefield of many gods
• A country is a conversation, a communion of many ideas
@Harshaman: Thank you, H. What thoughts did this poem inspire in you?
Hey idea, a happy sunday morning to you. Well , i think i am able to see polytheism and polyamory in same frame and i say this respectfully in a positive sense . Our country had always been hungry for spiritual knowledge the many gods we have attest to this fact. Also maybe so much of the religion is all hypocrisy. And am extremely skeptical of religious people, its weird on one hand we are seeking God and the other hand we are kicking humans who are created in the image of God.
Sorry to say this but am thoroughly convinced that we are a nation of hypocrites. We act holy in temples and churches and do all sorts of evil outside the places of worship. who are we fooling i do not understand? God? others ? or ourselves?
To sum it up, the poem reflects the hypocrisy of human nature. And am thoroughly convinced much of the evil that happens under the sky, happens in the name of good and God.