This year
our bodies will be bitter,
alien flavours are seeping up through them,
so they capitulate-
is this possible?
from water tainted by strontium, from murderous sunlight,
from virulent alkalis and words
we have hitherto selected (my dearest)
our daily nourishment,
our organs have been functioning,
our hearts, lungs and brains
have strained the filth off ceaselessly
and, like tapwater forced
through various purification-devices,
crystalline poems have poured on to my paper,
we were able to love one another,
our lips had not been poisoned,
and while our cells kept changing all the time
the eye, the hand, the forehead and the groin
remained the same,
no child of ours would wear
the features of a gesticulating puppet
on television,
it would wear the face we'd dreamt of,
our parts resisted stubbornly,
no matter that we'd gaped at calves and pigs,
no matter that we'd seen monsters,
God kept on stubbornly moulding
his own image in us,
no matter that we'd drunk vinegar,
no matter that we'd swallowed emetics,
in truth, it was all in vain,
but the body slowly deteriorates,
and the soul also deteriorates,
poems decay too,
for poisons penetrate
the elastic skin of our cells,
the taut membrane of our words, the inside
will come to resemble the outside,
if there is hatred there, let hatred be,
this is the true defeat,
your mouth will taste bitter when you kiss me
my mouth will be bitter when I kiss you,
my poem will taste bad,
this cannibal time
does not gobble me up, but it will not let me go,
and so we shall wander around here
forever and ever
not fit to be
eaten.
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On 27 February 2002, bogies of the Sabarmati Express were set ablaze near the railway station at Godhra in Gujarat, claiming 58 lives. On the following day began the longest continuous bout of mass violence in recent history. This violence, which has officially claimed more than a thousand lives-unofficial figures are at least three times that number-lasted more than 75 days. Its implications will be with us for much, much longer. The carnage got called by the routine name that all such violence is given: communal riot. In actual fact, it was nothing of the sort. Gujarat was a one-sided attack, a carnage. It was, to put it bluntly, genocide: 'the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group'. [.…….] This issue of STQ is a special issue on Gujarat. Not on Gujarati theatre, not on the bhavai, not on the dandiya. But Gujarat. The mayhem, the killings, the carnage. It is an attempt to understand what actually happened in Gujarat, so that, hopefully, we can begin to start thinking about how to fight it. Not just on the streets with demonstrations and dharnas, but also at the creative level, through plays and performances. In other words, this issue of STQ provides material that may help us think through our responses, creative and political, in the present circumstances. [from Sudhanva Deshpande.
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