Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 8, Number 2. November 2025. ISSN: 2581-7094
Can
I Retain a Little Compassion in the Turmoil?
---
Srijani Dutta
From where do I start to register the numbers of
bruised souls,
Disembodied tongues in order to
Show the atrocities done by unjust law?
From where do I start to navigate my investigation
of crimes officially done
by two mortal Satan?
I feel numb, I feel throttled, I feel nothing, I
feel everything,
Because I become the part of this whirlpool.
I become 'we', we become 'us', us become 'all' and
thus they fast.
Fast for the unending decades,
Till true justice comes,
Fascists stay alive without any sign of
compassion
And communalism is being fanned.
Murders of slogans,
Breaking down of solidarities,
Shutting down of internet, peace -
All take the apparition of a rampant chaos,
Accelerate the heat of this cyclone.
People do not get a job,
Some people do not have enough food,
An M. phil. sits in his room wearing the
certificates ,
Economy runs dry through the rivulets of brain
drains,
Compassionate ones are murdered
And hungry eyes
are detained in jails;
Detained, captive for days in and days out,
Tortured in the cells ruled by fascists,
Despotic whips paint thousands of flowers
On their backs and mouths;
Hands swollen out,
Still they remember their past martyrs' combat,
The remaining flames of candles echo their
voices "Azaaaadi, Azaaaadi",
Lathi charges on the protesting pockets, on the
roads,
Sleepless nights in Jamia and
in everywhere ,
We see a 'mark of woe' in the dying gaols.
This is not a ballad of Gaol,
Not that ballad of Gaol written by Oscar Wilde,
This is a confession on behalf of all.
Where bigot fanatics wrap themselves up with
Mantras without compassion and love,
Christ in Yeat's visionary 'second coming'
Is being dethroned by modern Hilter and Curzon
(even) in his birth month.
A partition for the second time,
A holocaust in nation,
Remember the episode of Titumir
Remember the sixties' revolutions (student
revolutions).
Sita had to pass out from that 'fire test'
And here, these political leaders make our nation an
overtly boiled, burned up, smelling toast,
Do not sit quietly
Rather,gather your courage
'Cause time has come to strike down the statues of
those rulers.
Still, I retain compassion in this deadly situation,
Still, we hope for truth and compassion,
Still, we hope for a better government
Still, we hope that Our lord Santa will gift it to
us in New Year's eve.
Today's life can be made into a compassionate film
named
"Schindler's list 1000" for future xyz
generation,
To remember this hope of the entire nation and the
martyrs of gaols.
Compassion is a dangerous thing,
It can drive a man and a nation insane,
We are waiting for volcanic eruption of compassion
and compassion only.
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Bio:
Srijani Dutta, a writer and independent researcher
hails from a beautiful place, Chandannagar of India. She loves reading books,
watching movies and expressing herself through colours, words, and images. Her
creative and academic writings, paintings have been published in the
journals like Setu, Parcham, Contemporary Literary Review India, Story Mirror,
EKL review journal, Plato’s cave online journal, The Antonym, RIC, Atunis
poetry, Das Literarisch, Saaranga magazine, literary
cognizance, Borderless journal, Creative chromosomes, Rappahannock review,
Fourth river journal, Synchronized Chaos, Beatnik Cowboy journal, Literary
Yard, Langlit, Ritvi journal, SLC, Culture Matters, Yearly Shakespeare and New
Literaria Etc.
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