I am the soul of a revolutionary fighter of India\/
\nListlessly roaming the streets of Chauri Chaura\/
\nThe pages of history unfurl back a hundred years,\/<\/p>\n
Mind rankles with the memory\/
\nOf that cursed day when oppressed, supressed enslaved Indians\/
\nDecided it was time to unleash their fire\/
\nThat the British had so unjustly trampled upon;\/
\n caged a lion in a dog’s kennel…\/
\nWe the revolutionaries had rent the air of ‘Gauri Bazar’\/
\nWith crisp anti-British slogans\/
\nAgainst high food prices and anti- dharma liquor shops,\/<\/p>\n
The Police opened violence upon us like\/ we were cattle or mad dogs\/
\n‘Always leave at least one door open, when you corner a lion\/
\nLest it pounce upon you’ have said our elders
\nA lesson our oppressors didn’t ever heed\/
\nWe retaliated and burnt their police station down\/
\nAs bodies burnt, pitiful cries echoed, it felt\/ retribution had at last found peace\/
\nBut we are from the land of the ‘ahimsa’; we believe in karma\/
\nWe believe in ‘athithi devo bhava’, \/
\nin doing our duty without focus on the fruit\/<\/p>\n
The non co-operation movement called off;\/
\nI died of a broken heart\/
\nWith unanswered questions, frozen on my lips\/
\nAs I float through today’s India,\/
\nThe questions, broken, fragmented, flying from different directions\/
\nSlam in to each other, to conjure into one whole, \/
\nThey disturb me; the questions, I mean\/
\nWho was wrong? Who was wronged? \/
\nSays our Gita, if the one sinned against, \/ does not fight back
\nIs more a sinner than the sinner himself\/<\/p>\n
I ask again, I seek the answers again,\/
\n‘Who was wrong? Who was wronged?’\/
\nI know they will remain unanswered\/
\nToday too, in every lane, in every corner of my beloved country,\/
\nThere will always be a ‘Chaura Chauri’\/ imprisoned in the pages of posterity\/
\nAnd the answers will hang in the air,\/guarded by swords for posterity…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4553,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4553"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110091"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110100,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110091\/revisions\/110100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}