She raved, she ranted,
Many times she burst out
Uppercaste this...Brahmincal that
At the inhumanity of it all
At the injustice of it all
Wait a minute...
Is it the same woman
Who spoke soft words, and tenderly hugged
And embraced
Little kids—
The untouchables,
The Muslims,
The women,
The minorities,
The Maoists?
Few Rabids barked she is a bitch,
Some even called her a prostitute,
Just because she was single
And lived her life the way she wanted to
But hundreds called her sister,
Thousands called her mother,
A million are now saying...
“We are all Gauri.”
She blasted when someone threw a
Cigarette butt from the car window
Lest it would hurt a two-wheeler rider.
Her house is a garden
Where many a snake wandered
And she would wait patiently
For it to slither by
Not stopping , not harming , not killing it
Waiting patiently for it to pass and continue to live.
But finally a snake came which didn’t slither away,
A snake
On a two-wheeler
To put the fire out of Gauri
And silence her.
Silence Gauri?
Ha ha! What a joke!
She burst like sunflower seeds,
Scattered all over
In India
And across the seas...
Now the silence is chanting, echoing, “
We are all Gauri.”
(The writer is a Kannada film director, writer and lyricist. She is the younger sister of journalist Gauri Lankesh, who was killed in cold blood on September 5)
