A FEROCIOUS FREEDOM: Poem by Naisha Chawla

The ground beneath me
Raging with pride,
And the sky above
Painted with doves.
People all around me
Rejoice in that glorious feeling,
That very one that you and I share,
Underneath the waving colours of saffron, green, white and blue.
To unite us within the differences.
To stitch us within the seams of unitive cloth.
To rise against oppressors like we did before.
To fuse together some and few and all,
Underneath the waving colours of saffron, green, white and blue’s fall
To grow, to learn,
To slow and to yearn,
That sense of belonging within your own people
That is what is meant by that fragile, slippery word
What did they call it again?
Freedom.
The blood has been shed.
The lives spent in the grasps of change,
And out of it has risen this beauty,
In attempts to not feel estranged.
Poets have composed
Artists sung
And for respected martyrs
Low heads hung.
And from every full mast to half and full again
We have all grown stronger,
Stronger since then,
And to every mother’s tear that shed,
For the life of her fallen soldier,
The nations compassion stood with them
In solidarity, shoulder to shoulder.
Revered in our hearts, is her name,
Such is Bharat Mata’s fame.
It shall stay until our last breaths too
To never forget the damp soil where I grew
To remember and to honour the souls that passed
And to salute the tricolours, host at full mast.