Subsumed in the ripples of Cherwell, and
Baba, perennially drawn towards you
The dogma of breathing in gutters,
smell torched in murky black rotten
stools and urine,
I write this ode while asphyxiating in a gutter.
though I cannot define more than random scribbles,
for a matchstick won’t ignite,
I think I have already passed away in nuisances,
painting with urine, excreta and
fragrant colours of spring flowers.
Here is my last ode to you Baba though not the only one—
Damp sunlight passes through nostrils,
reflecting smell of rotten discrimination,
in the gutters of noisy civilisation.
I grew up in sores, blisters and poison assurances
with your photo hanging on the wall,
kept on the top of cupboard.
Despite my organs screeched,
I drew colours from it to not commit suicide
from your words, from the fragrance of your voice
in rebel splashes of your dicta.
‘Educate, agitate, organise’ kept me lurking for more fights,
standing up against segregation of living spaces,
discrimination based on caste,
it did cost me my name, my well-being, and everything,
it made me come here inside the depth of gutters,
to earn bread, yet no regrets, no expectations.
Lurking in humiliation and stigma of sunset,
drawn towards sunrise of another death,
your efforts liberated distinct broken minds,
and exhumed the chains of caste oppression.
Your capitalist and appropriators,
Might have consumed your movement into a broken thunder,
The rebel in you still inspires the impotent colours of expressions,
Kicking deep in groin of the upper-caste mercy, and
Imagining a free and equal world for myself.
Cuss words, todi/country liquor, ganja, charas,
afeem, hashish, solution, taking all at once,
to express meanings of human dignity,
in hollow painted colours of tongue cutting,
rapes, severing of breasts, penises, and
then calling them just ‘atrocities’.
Justice recreated every now and then
in the ashes of summer waters flaming
with nail marks, whip lashes and
offerings of chilli powders and spices, and
decorated cuts across the throat with
sharp human butchering knife.
I never prayed to you with folded hands,
I used the power you gave to break the definitions,
Imagine radical transformation.
Yet I am here expressing impotent colours,
still fighting for your words and dignity.
I was told many a times by upper-castes that my English is bad,
Now that I have learnt it,
it only writes and speaks offensive flowers.
Did I fulfil their request?
What is grown in the forests of pubic lands is one ode to the truth,
In quite disgusting English, untamed and unruly.
A song of bird singing revolution in the reflections of Cherwell,
standing on the Wolfson college bridge, before taking the leap
I interpreted the ripples of spring insects to paint a song—
Gutter remained shallow, but now the
mix of rotten urine, excreta, blood,
vegetables, human flesh, caste slums
all amalgamated in the ink of this poem.
Remaining stigmatised for the rest of my life,
paralysed in voice and towering achievements,
I grew like the broken punts of sunshine
Wrong in measures, drastically charred,
and full of waterboarding laughter,
Not forgetting one underlying expression:
To revolt again, continue revolting
for colours of free breaths,
for screeches of warm summer free grasslands
to defy injustices, humiliations and stigma,
and like the ripples of dying moth,
keep you always alive in breath and ideas,
inspire from your word ripples not statues,
and only aim towards annihilating caste.
It may cost me another twenty lives, and
more social deaths, it doesn’t matter.
While breathing the air of oppression,
I will use it to slit the asphyxiations,
and drown the gutter of civilisation.
Asang Wankhede is a DPHIL scholar at the University Of Oxford
