The bar­baric open-air death of John Floyd tele­vised world­wide stirred the con­science of those who had it. The #Black­Lives­Mat­ter move­ment put the colour prob­lem in per­spec­tive and many around the world iden­ti­fied with it. WSN pre­sents the heart­felt out­pour­ing of a young poet -14-year-old, Delhi-based, ninth class stu­dent Harnoor Kaur Gre­wal who hopes that times will change and colour will not be a dis­crim­i­na­tory weapon by one per­son against an­other.

THE SIGHT OF ONE HU­MAN BE­ING BE­ING TOR­TURED in the name of race, caste or colour is some­thing that baf­fles me no end and makes me very sad. I was deeply sad­dened when I saw the news of George Floyd dy­ing of homi­cide when he was neck-re­strained by an Amer­i­can po­lice­man while his col­leagues stood still al­low­ing him to do what he was do­ing -chok­ing for full three min­utes, not lis­ten­ing to his plea of “I can’t breathe.” Such mon­stros­ity is in­tol­er­a­ble and un­ac­cept­able. The po­lice in uni­form -in the United States of Amer­ica and else­where must know how such das­tardly news on tele­vi­sion and so­cial me­dia af­fects chil­dren and teenagers. I am hope­ful things will change for the bet­ter.

‘An un­told sad tes­ta­ment of my life;
No joy, no peace; all strug­gle and strife.’
Said, the women who came up to me
‘That my colour be­ing is all my dif­fi­culty
This so­ci­ety of the pow­er­ful white and yel­low
Made my life like a bam­boo hol­low
We are out­casts so say they all
Re­al­iza­tion of this has cre­ated a wall
Strug­gling to sur­vive each mo­ment, each day
Breath­ing on bor­rowed air, they say
Blacks are we, the slave since past
You will re­main so slaves till last.

There is no op­tion to break free from this
Even caged, chained and ex­hausted amiss
One of us tried to be free from chain
To breathe open air, but all in vain
They caught him and beat him hol­low and blue.
He is now liv­ing or dead; no clue.

Liv­ing in these al­leys of death and hell
The real story I am afraid to tell
My thoughts fly which no one can catch
Why can­not we stand; why don’t we match
Their body is the same as that of mine
Made by one God, the su­per sub­lime
Why did he al­low this war of colours
Be­lit­tling the pre­cious and dear life of ours.

They call them­selves day and call us night
But God made us equal may be black and white
He cre­ated no dif­fer­ence in mind or sight
Pray as­sure us to live re­spect­fully up­right.
I am sure the dream will soon be true.
When we are also re­spected like you.’

Harnoor Kaur Gre­wal writes short sto­ries and po­ems while pur­su­ing her school stud­ies. She is deeply in­ter­ested in en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues though she closely mon­i­tors cur­rent af­fairs too. Much-trav­elled Harnoor Kaur started writ­ing verse at 9 and comes from a fam­ily of writ­ers. Her first book of po­ems will be pub­lished soon.

Ti­tle Photo: George Floyd por­trait by An­drez Guz­man. Cour­tesy: the­cur­rent.org