I am the soul of a revolutionary fighter of India/
Listlessly roaming the streets of Chauri Chaura/
The pages of history unfurl back a hundred years,/

Mind rankles with the memory/
Of that cursed day when oppressed, supressed enslaved Indians/
Decided it was time to unleash their fire/
That the British had so unjustly trampled upon;/
caged a lion in a dog’s kennel…/
We the revolutionaries had rent the air of ‘Gauri Bazar’/
With crisp anti-British slogans/
Against high food prices and anti- dharma liquor shops,/

The Police opened violence upon us like/ we were cattle or mad dogs/
‘Always leave at least one door open, when you corner a lion/
Lest it pounce upon you’ have said our elders
A lesson our oppressors didn’t ever heed/
We retaliated and burnt their police station down/
As bodies burnt, pitiful cries echoed, it felt/ retribution had at last found peace/
But we are from the land of the ‘ahimsa’; we believe in karma/
We believe in ‘athithi devo bhava’, /
in doing our duty without focus on the fruit/

The non co-operation movement called off;/
I died of a broken heart/
With unanswered questions, frozen on my lips/
As I float through today’s India,/
The questions, broken, fragmented, flying from different directions/
Slam in to each other, to conjure into one whole, /
They disturb me; the questions, I mean/
Who was wrong? Who was wronged? /
Says our Gita, if the one sinned against, / does not fight back
Is more a sinner than the sinner himself/

I ask again, I seek the answers again,/
‘Who was wrong? Who was wronged?’/
I know they will remain unanswered/
Today too, in every lane, in every corner of my beloved country,/
There will always be a ‘Chaura Chauri’/ imprisoned in the pages of posterity/
And the answers will hang in the air,/guarded by swords for posterity…