Sasha Banhotra: Art & Poetry (Life, Cognition and Creativity)

This freedom that I call mine

Wondering how Religion took it all away from us 

The freedom to practice our undeniable interests. 

The same freedom that allows the pandit to worship the carved stone

With his bloomed self-esteem while adorers celebrate his throne. 

The same freedom that allows Allah to rest in tranquillity 

Inside the celebrated walls of a masjid built in Limestone.

The freedom that propels each Sardar to offer langar

To every passer-by who enters their golden walls. 

The freedom that my country received 

a long time ago, in fact! 

When slavery wasn’t seasonal 

Rather, an everyday ship that they had to row 

While, painstaking Indian farmers hurriedly hit their plough. 

It was indeed instilled in my citizens’ blood

Swept off the hardships from their fatigued foreheads  

Since at least they carried the freedom to breathe bold.

Freedom wasn’t brought easy upon them,

They had to fight to lay it easy upon us.

And even after seventy-three years of living in a free country 

The citizens who define themselves as patriotic 

Have now come up with different semiotics 

I often come across incidents that push me 

To question the idea itself called ‘freedom’

Since we are free but are, we really? 

I ask myself quite seldom. 

This freedom that I mightily call mine today 

Was brought to me by my ancestors who had to 

Barter their bodies to send it my way 

To practice this freedom right every day

Is the only wish I make today. 

For its a legacy I wish to leave for my children 

As I don’t want them to become slaves to the 

Inane ideas that sway across countries today.

I wish freedom for them in its truest mightiest sense 

When they would be flying free as a bird 

not to hunt or prey but to feel the breeze 

and along with it, they would sway.

***

The Bulb of their Living Room

She does trip and fall; she goes by heaving herself every day

amidst the fuss and that's not all! She is often found calculating her miles. 

Oh, how she goes by cluttering everything that surrounds her life.  

She has been thinking, Me: the wife, has been drinking 

the wine of his insensitivity, incapability, and hypocrisy.

Oh, the hypocrisy! Sure, is overlaid on the carpet of their living room 

as it portrays the lovely Lilies in the falling June.

Don’t even get her started on how they proceed with their lives;

every morning brings a sour taste on this tragic tongue, that’s her life.

For she never came across a man. 

A man in its true sense. 

A man of his words. 

A man she read about: Intellectually Intense  

With his attention directed to her. Now, she regrets the rejections 

she made, while still in her young years.

Would it ever make a difference to him, if she hung herself,

in their living room, swinging like a pendulum on loose?

Then it occurs to her, hanging herself would cost her life to her.  

The same life that was carried in a womb for nine months 

with an exhilarating oomph!

She certainly can’t gift her mother a hanging body, 

a draped soul in a white khadi. So, she leaves behind 

everything that pulled her down, decides to free herself

from the obliterating hounds. Got up from her chair, 

renewed by the fresh thoughts, walked into the same living room. 

She stepped up on the table reaching for the fan only this time 

to replace the bulb hanging there from the last ten years of a time. 

***

Take me back to thy water

Have been floating in the dead waters

How does the alive one feel like?

Is it as charming as a toddler’s laugh?

Or as motherly as a newly discovered lost scarf?

Oh, maa, surely, I knew while inside you

but now I am just too grown, died you.

Remember, when one’s alive before born?

Floating actually developing slowly

inside the amniotic sac of water holy

So, to enjoy the privileges of this

brittle battle called life, solely.

Simple matters surely

whether it’s the rising sun boldly

spreading splendid rays marking its territory

with grooving little specks in it dreamily

or stars shining amidst the night shy

bright, subtle, and soothingly shimmery.

A baby plant while tiny aims for the sky

An array of utter strength and days go by

to grow the tallest one day and reach the high

heightening without distraction but the sky

unknowingly serving breath to every passer-by.

Water broke maa, making way for

a much-celebrated life only nine months old

Here comes the first cry, the skin’s cold

loud enough to mark the existence of its own kind

unaware thousands already battling in the grind.

Arrives the moment of mourning realization

where the water can’t hold or protect anymore

Suddenly, appears to be destructive in nature

Unlike the days gone in my early early phase

now holds the power to chase.

There exists no such water

like the one that brought me here

It held me inside away from fear

Kept me safe a miracle they hear

A miracle of its own kind, adhere!

Maa, now when I think about you

I dream of the sac I was confined to

Perhaps, after much prep, I might too…

The remorseful reality breaks my heart 

with you not here it’s going to be hard

now inside me beats an innocent heart.

***

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Life, Cognition and Creativity :: Setu, December 2020