“It is not as though Gulzar has not poetically commented on developments in this area in the past. But, for the first time perhaps, all the poems in a volume by him are organically animated by this theme. It would be devaluing Gulzar’s poetic sophistication to believe that he might pen a polemical or partisan lyric on issues of national concern,” he says.
The poem on Kalburgi reads: “He did not die… The person who died and lies on the threshold Is someone else…”
Another one on news titles “The Same News” goes: “Every day the same newspaper column/ Gulps of the same brackish news/ Every day the same mouthful of promises/ Sentences dissected/ Each word chewed again and again.”
There are two poems on Babri and Ayodhya in the book, published by Penguin Random House.
The one on Babri reads: “From the smoke that rises daily/ A part of the sky/ Now remains black the whole day/ Only pariah kites hover above./ Families of vultures sit/ On some half-charred trees below/ Their stomachs bloated;/ Amidst the heaps of garbage lying around/ Heads on ice-cold corpses smoulder/ As the animals of dusk/ Fight for every bone of rotting limbs/ Whoever can sink their teeth in first/ Has the right over that piece of flesh./ Who was the one who struck the first blow of the axe?/ Yes, this indeed is that piece of land/ Which till yesterday was also a home to some god!”
