Wednesday, January 16, 2013

A month later, in memory of..



       ***************************************
                                    Jyothi


                                         A
                                        bus
                                 came by, they
                                  hesitated but
                                    got inside
                                     anyway.
           Sparkles in eyes, lightness in steps, just a
           boy and girl on the way back from a movie.
           Interrupted. A nasty comment by one who
           lured them inside with a singsong solicitation
           whistle. Violation became vicious. Fueled by
           entitled rage. Hours later, a nation found its
           guts were pulled off. Shocked nation lay by
          roadside, bloodied and naked in the cold dark.
           Cuts, bites, wounds for all to feel. But no one
           offered to cover even as it agonized for help,
           shivering, bleeding, throbbing. Even one tear
           of the young girl who stood up for the right to
           be herself has more worth than all that was 
           ever fathomed and will be - that almost all
           felt this later and their hearts hushed as she lay 
           dying maybe the realistic hope that there is for 
           this restless nation, so young, so old, so much 
           vigor and so resigned, now forever haunted by 
           the headline“A large number of Police Vans 
           and BSF followed the victim as her body was 
           taken for cremation.” When one, just one cop 
           or a morsel of respect in any of the 6 men could 
           have saved the night when a girl going home from
           a movie bravely battled beastliness in a quietly
           plying bus in the heart of a city in a free nation.



***** 
January 2013