In summers, or in rainy season,
Anytime of red letter days
Your air holds the people’s cries of mass protests
How many decibels of voices can your air fairly absorb?
And your streets carry their laden feet
How many thousands more can you hold?
They will keep on coming over close to you
Heavier, clearer and louder, with red banners
Slogans and demands, faces of old and young
You may not remember them all– but mostly
People with sunburned skin, calloused hands and feet,
Deep-seated eyes, in tattered clothes, loose slippers;
Tight tendons, in rumbling hearts, crying out loud,
Mournful over the deaths of their loved ones,
Angered with the mockery of the tyrant ruler
And the ruling system where the rich is getting richer
The poor has nothing, not even a candle on their graves;
They will keep on coming over close to you
And round all over the city place, yes, thousands
And thousands more, with new faces young and the old,
Dark days haven’t gone; darker days are set to come
Every day, reasons of protest are there afresh
When mountains are scraped, farms are destroyed,
And poor people are evicted, arrested or killed,
Hunger is plaguing every peasants and workers’ home,
The cost of living running so high, see their dried
Wrinkled lips telling their woes and litany of hardships,
The middle-class rises too, crying out in resistance
Against the cha-cha power-grab, and seeing noble dreams
Of promised peace and social justice getting amiss;
They will be coming in the days you always expect
Let their voices and cries linger in your air and be heard,
Let the weight of their laden feet rest on your shoulder
They are not a pestering noise or garbage on your grounds
But a gathering force of people calling for a downfall —
The king not worth a damn, and did you remember?
Downfall stories are not a fiction,
It happened twice in our country before.
Meet Mago Contributor, Maya Daniel