This poignant poem by Vijayshankar on DifferentTruths.com exposes the raw devastation of poverty, environmental loss, and the struggle for human survival.
I am neither an ascetic of cremation grounds,
nor a practitioner of esoteric rites—
I am merely
a child of a great nation,
submerged in ash,
whose hearth
has been extinguished by hunger.
The trees disappeared, one by one—
some to the axe.
some to transactions,
some into the custody of hands
that recognised not shade,
only price.
Every form of fuel
departed first from the household,
then from the village,
then from the forest—
until, finally,
It vanished even from memory.
Living, by its own compulsion,
led me
to that place
where the human body
enters its final fire.
Returning home in silence,
I place before my mother
the fuel gathered from the pyre—
extinguishing the flame,
sifting bone from residue,
selecting the half-burnt coal.
She asks nothing.
She only breathes, gently,
into those embers
in which someone’s last breaths
still smoulder.
The bread is baked.
We eat together—
in the taste of that fire
within which
the body, for the final time,
relinquishes its impurities.
This, now,
is our fuel.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
Vijayshankar Chaturvedi is a senior journalist, author, and public intellectual with over three decades in the Indian media. He spent more than a decade on Jansatta’s editorial team and now contributes incisive columns on public policy, international affairs, and socio-political issues to Jansatta, Navbharat Times, ABP News, Samalochan, Jan Chowk, and Hindi Saamana. His recent explorations delve deeply into human consciousness, decision-making processes, and the profound transformation of agency in the AI era.
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