A voice that cannot be stifled, a protest that breaks shackles is the poetic voice of Lopamudra. Her protest poem envisions change. Here’s her firebrand poem for Different Truths.
Every single day, we gulp down stones.
Stones thrown, pelting on the Dalit, the untouchable mass,
breathing on existential ashes.
Every single day, pride of a Brahmin blood
Gnashes his teeth, burning in feudal flames.
Every single day, the deepest wells
In the widows’ eyes in Varanasi spills a silent, festering fluid.
Every single moonless night, a whore scrapes
her overused bed sheets and a wrecked vagina.
Every single moonlit night, somewhere a grown up bride,
a child bride crumbles in a marital bed,
thanking God for she is not a public woman,
for her man uses her well.
Every single day, a little girl somewhere in Bihar, in Rajasthan, in Punjab
thanks her stars that her heart is still pounding,
that her school bag still carries some crinkled books
and a nascent wish granted by a Djinn.
That she is not crushed, ripped off from her mother’s womb
like her sisters, never born.
Every single day, a farmer, a rickshaw puller
Blown away to smithereens,
And metric lines of a vain intelligentsia scream: CHANGE.
Let Change be the one bruised stroke that catches flame.
Let Change not be a mere saffron glint of words and hope,
lubricating our parched voices.
Is the world ready for the shame, the horror of change?
Does the world lament when the froth dies, and resurfaces?
Let change be the dark corridor
where scriptures and psalms burn in their clamorous fire,
And all that remains is an endless thirst,
Thirst of the bone, sinew and blood,
Thirst of a morphed, ‘work-in- progress’ universe
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Lopamudra Banerjee is an author, poet, translator, and editor with nine solo books and six anthologies spanning fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her work has earned recognition in India and the USA. Recent notable books include a collaborative poetry collection with Priscilla Rice, We Are What We Are (1st Prize, New York Book Festival 2024); her translation of Mallika Sengupta’s Kabir Bouthan as The Bard and His Sister-in-Law (Honorary Mention, Paris and Hollywood Book Festivals 2024); and Draupadi theke Nijashwi (2025).
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