Art, the­atre, paint­ings, movies, videos, books, verse, mon­u­ments and mu­se­ums are me­dia to re­live and rekin­dle mem­o­ries of  years gone by, par­tic­u­larly years of pain and in­jus­tice. Through this poem, the poet re­lives the hor­rors of No­vem­ber 1984 and rues the com­plic­ity of the gov­ern­ment in this crime against hu­man­ity.

1984

There had been J & K, As­sam,
Ma­nipur, Godhra and much more,
What rightly haunts Delhi still
are mem­o­ries of nine­teen-eighty-four.

Still are in agony the vic­tims of that
naked dance of pseudo-power,
the death of civ­i­liza­tion in the coun­try
fol­low­ing the Op­er­a­tion Blues­tar.

The op­er­a­tion where Gov­ern­ment used
its ma­chin­ery against its own folks;
the sin­gle in­stance of its kind in the world,
at which hu­mankind still mocks.

To them, God is dead, tol­er­ance van­ished,
right­eous­ness gone, and hu­man­ity is no more.
They have slept for ages and now;
if some­one wakes up, they can­not en­dure.

One, who comes out of the slum­ber,
is here al­ways known as a rebel.
And iron­i­cally, democ­racy
is of, by and for the peo­ple.