Who are you again? Let’s recollect.
OUR servants, OUR representatives,
Voted to power, whether rightly or not,
Only time tells, As is telling us now!
What are you without us?
Need we remind you?
When designing campaign posters,
And obstructing traffic ways for rallies,
All to induce us to bring you to power,
so that you can someday impose on us
The power which we gave to you?
All eyes were shut, turned away,
Until today,
When the selective evils of the society,
The ones which were always there, however obscure,
Suddenly uncovered-
The burden of it all thrown on one’s shoulders.
Then, somewhere else, we see:
One muscle against another,
That’s all it’s come to now.
The extremely dramatic storylines
which once formed part of our cinematic entertainment,
Covertly trying to show us what lies underneath-
Has come up aghast and open
engulfing us in this unwanted rheality
Wielding the power-
That, mind you, we handed to you.
How low will you stoop? Just how low?
Who are you again?
You want to keep that forgotten
amidst the haze of dignity of the state.
The same freedom-
when used against someone, not the State
is constitutional freedom, no matter how unconstitutional to another;
but when used against the State in minuscule amounts,
is chained by the clutches of what some call sedition.
Oh! the State! and all its actors-
can’t take the weight on its back.
It was always illegal to ask for freedom,
To fight for it.
Those who did, suffered the consequences
Those who didn’t, reaped the benefits.
I choose to be the voice of dissent,
of TELLING you what you ought to do.
Who has empowered you to take offence
when I say I don’t feel safe around you?
Who has empowered you to take offence
when I have a mind of my own, not befitting yours.
I know now that nothing scares you,
You have shown it to us.
I know if this reaches you,
your blood will boil with sheer intolerance
of someone not bowing down to your power
of what you decide for me.
You want to show everyone their place,
beneath yours,
more than checking up on
how far you’ve drifted from yours.
Today, my eyes opened up to realising –
that you care not
about the people who need you;
you know there are too many
and you can’t cater to them all.
So you choose, carefully so-
the people who don’t,
and break one leg
and demand that they need you
and yet, when they are strong enough
to refuse your hand to get back up,
you break the other too,
For how dare they not see how brawny you are!