Shail explores India’s Kho-kho triumph, the tragic reality of Iraqi child marriage, and the ethical dilemmas surrounding birthright citizenship policies, exclusively for Different Truths.

India Kho-kho World Champions

From the Sanskrit verbroot-vyu
‘get up and go’
Kho-kho
actually, a modified form
of Run Chase- to chase
and touch a person
played on chariots earlier,
the game transformed
into being played on foot
sometimes when the 1st
World War was afoot.
The Indian men and women
Kho-kho team
recently claimed a global dream
winning the World Cup 2025
title defeating countries like Brazil,
Iran, Peru, Nepal, Bhutan,
Malaysia and Korea.
Yeah!
A game often underestimated
traces its origins way back
to the ‘chakravyuh’ incident
during the 18-day-long war
of the Mahabharata
replete with defence tactics,
no dirty tricks this.

Iraqi law enforces child marriage

Today,
the world is expanding,
transforming into a platform
free for all, for men and women
to walk, to work
in harmony, in equality.
Is this perfect world
but an illusion
when nations like Iraq
pass laws permitting children
as young as nine face marital crime?
Is this law a mere justification
for ‘legalised child rape?’
Religions reveal.
Faith enlightens.
But, what if the same religious preachers
hold human family life to ransom?
The child marriage a reason
to escape poverty maybe,
for some
bringing with it a life-long misery
that comes with an enslaved childhood,
social shame, a mere game
for older men to enter into wedlock,
insensitively acquire a wife
with a girl fit to be his child.
The law’s a mere excuse to
inflict sexual assault,
to deprive a child of the right
to be free, a loophole
for parents to sell off young daughters.
Alarmed Iraqi women ask,
“Where is equality when
worldwide development shreds
humanity with its layers
of corruptive, polluted thought?”

Birthright citizenship panic

Can just a mere change in
government spread so much
maniac panic that makes
a parent refuses to be sensitive
to the needs of his child
if only to establish a position in
foreign society, to revel in
a world that they are claiming
to be theirs by default,
wanting to cash in on their
unborn’s existence that
would promote them
from status immigrant to status
accepted citizenship?
What kind of vampirish feeding
is this human spaceship
that is making parents rush
to doctors to dig out
nesting babies from wombs
not ready yet to come into the world?
Parents inviting damaged intestines,
brain bleeding, neurological disorder
of their babies
all to beat the February 20 deadline
to claim birthright citizenship!
Is that piece of paper worth
the pain, the trauma
the premature child
shall endure lifelong?

References:

https://www.olympics.com/en/news/kho-kho-world-cup-2025-final-india-vs-nepal-men-women-match-report

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/21/middleeast/iraq-child-marriage-lawmakers-criticize-bill-intl-hnk/index.html

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/rush-for-preterm-babies-to-beat-birthright-citizenship-deadline/articleshow/117470382.cms

Picture design by Anumita Roy

Shail Raghuvanshi

Shail Raghuvanshi is a poet, freelance journalist, copyeditor, voice actor, and artist with 30 years of experience in various media. She has worked as the Cultural Correspondent for India’s first integrated media company, PLUS Channel, and has written course material for Madurai Kamaraj University’s Post Graduate Programme in Advertising and Public Relations. She has also been a coach of Communicative English. She has published poems, short stories, and articles in leading magazines and anthologies.