Poetry
One Hears That The Grass Has Grown Again
JASPREET SINGH
One hears that the grass has grown again
and old domes have been plated
with gold. Children of ashened fathers
have acquired autos and crystals, and Lutyens’
stones have bloomed
One hears about the impossibility
of living in the past, difficulties of forever
remaining within eddies of anguish
One hears the bankers and school-masters
talk about the need of the hour
to move on
Ruination of language
and justice – For them are merely burned
incense-sticks
or a lost cricket match
Why then before each year comes to an end
I, like so many others,
get Novemberized?
Perhaps until the losses are fully processed
and accepted, our work of mourning
shall remain unfinished ...
Perhaps only then time will smell like time again
Hope we perform this deep
crystal work of past-presentness
with un-iced solitude
and togetherness -- using all the instruments
of creativity
No one can order us to unremember, especially not
the perpetrator
We know this all too well
(not after 3 days
or 3 decades)
To forget is to stop being honest to oneself
To forget is to necklace the exterminated twice over
To forget is to erase from our daily prayers sarbat da bhalla
To forget is to stop loving life
To forget is to cease loving each other
To forget is to die
Let us never and Never
Let us never forget 1984
The author is an award-winning Canadian writer. His latest novel, Helium, focuses on the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms in India.
July 21, 2014
Conversation about this article
1: Kaala Singh (Punjab), July 21, 2014, 1:18 PM.
I have to confess, my blood boils when I look at the pictures of these goondas attacking Sikhs in November 1984. India is full of such small-time criminals who will do anything for a small amount of money. But dealing with these cowards is no big deal. We have to stay united and have some numbers wherever we live. Wherever organized, small groups of Sikhs were able to chase away big mobs of these rats in 1984.