Maroon silence covers
Thousand hundred wars
And the emperor cried of his bloody hands.
I fight with an unrecognized enemy
That is in maroon veil.
My enemy goes on multiplying
Like an amoeba within me
That I don’t recognise myself anymore –
Me a fractioned self into innumerable
Amoebae to fight against
Under a maroon veil:
Maroon is the war
Maroon is the threshold
Of day and night:
I hide myself under a maroon veil.
* * *
17-10-1969
Baroda (Vadodara)
Note: The image above is by the author. It was made around the same time.
(I wrote this composition during my stay in Baroda (now Vadodara). Then I was the witness to communal riots, exploitation of the scheduled caste and the schedule tribe in Gujarat State. The gender atrocities were very common, such as dowry deaths. It was no more a peace-loving State. But what I witnessed then was only a tip of an iceberg, or the beginning of the unrest/atrocities that followed in three decades.)
Baroda (Vadodara)
Note: The image above is by the author. It was made around the same time.
(I wrote this composition during my stay in Baroda (now Vadodara). Then I was the witness to communal riots, exploitation of the scheduled caste and the schedule tribe in Gujarat State. The gender atrocities were very common, such as dowry deaths. It was no more a peace-loving State. But what I witnessed then was only a tip of an iceberg, or the beginning of the unrest/atrocities that followed in three decades.)
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© Remigius de Souza., All rights reserves.
