Bharat Mata 1905 Abanindranath Tagore
I’VE BEEN SNIFFING GLUE. THE ONE ema-nating from India’s streets, asserted by a people in spate. Horror is rife and hope has been unleashed. In a rising of unprecedented coalition and scale. Women in the lead. The youth finding voice. Taking risks for the other. A surge of heart and wit in songs, placards, graffiti. The word ‘republic’ animated, its last six letters in neon. I am a grateful witness to what feels like an incandescent beginning.
I watched agog as Shaheen Bagh rang in 2020. Singing the national anthem at midnight, a sea of faces upturned at a towering tricolour rippling in the frigid air. It could’ve been a painting. The morning paper had more. There sat Rehana Khatun, under a thin tarp, swaddled against the coldest Delhi winter in a hundred years, gazing at her 20-day-old baby asleep on her lap. The baby only days older than the atrocities at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University. The caption read:
Through the darkest night
In a land ill and faint
You stayed awake
Resolute and good
Guarding me on your lap
From nightmares.
This story is from the April - June 2020 edition of The Indian Quarterly.
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This story is from the April - June 2020 edition of The Indian Quarterly.
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