
People dying in riots and pogroms,
People going behind the bars,
People firing slogans in the wind,
People watching people getting lynched-
I see people embracing people,
I see people stabbing people,
People being united on religion and creed,
People being divided on clothes and cuisines,
People are one for fire and water,
But people are divided on saffron and green-
Celebrating their own decadence in political euphoria,
I see people abusing people on social media.
Beware, if you are speaking for people,
Beware, if you are writing for people,
They are no more sober and sane,
They have been injected jingoism’s heroin
They have snorted hatred’s cocaine.
Challenging their Whatsapp-farward-knowledge,
Mocking their memes shared on Facebook,
Or flouting their tweets in the praise of some thugs,
Can be harmful- very-very harmful for you,
Abuses, threats, character-assassinations are quite common,
If you don’t agree with their point of view,
This is the new normal and so rampant it is,
Even educated and sensible ones have lost their courage,
And some of them have deliberately strangled it.
Some want to remain in the dark, and call it indifference,
Some even justify it in the name of tolerance,
But deep down I know they have lost their significance. Dead!
As a public of a Republic (No, don’t take it for any news channel.),
They are just a face in the crowd, a name in the voter list,
And in the register of municipality for the convenience of a death certificate.
~ Ravi
P.S. – this is a poem about the sheer jingoism, hatred and ignorance prevalent in the society, and how people react on the point of views of other people. The politics of hatred has developed a species of chauvinists who are ready to cross any limit of civility for proving their ill-informed, propagandist ideas. And you can see this on the tweets and posts wars on social media. Photo is taken from the internet owing full credit to owner and creator.
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Ravi is basically a Teacher and Reader. He loves to read interesting and thought-provoking books. On an average, he reads 80 to 90 books per year. He is much into realistic, political, historical and philosophical works, but occasionally he likes to read Poems, Short-stories, Fantasy and Romance. His other hobbies are Singing, Photography, Movies, and Travelling. Ravi started his writing by writing poems and book-reviews and he has written more than one hundred fifty poems in English and more than three hundred book reviews; some of his poems have been published in various online journals like : Indian Periodical, Mad Swirl, Borderless; in Print, his poems have been published in Oxigle Media Publications’ anthology “Whisper of Hearts” and Evincepub Publications’ anthology “Rubaroo”. One of his Short-stories has been published in TheUNIverse Journal and one of his articles has been published in Indian Periodical. Ravi has also published his collection of Hindi Poems “Vo Baat Un Dino Ki Thi” on Amazon Kindle.
Ravi is planning to publish his collection of short-stories and poems in near future, and working on his first novel right now.