Protesting through words

 I protest

When I see:

An innocent young bride

Burnt for inadequate dowry

Anywhere in my India.

I protest

When I see:

Children sweating

Like the young Dickens

In dark factories

For few rupees

And

Forgetting their happy childhood

Within the stone walls

Of those dark halls

Of hell.

I protest

When I see:

Dissidents getting

Bumped off in the nations

Nearby or far-off

Or,

The Bamyan Buddhas

Being razed to ground

By the Taliban

Or,

When a woman journalist Lubna Hussein

To be lashed for wearing pants

In Sudan.

But---

I protest

With words only

Because strikes are

Banned here

In my country.

Words become my weapons

Potent

They question

Every misdeed

Of the elites powerful

And

Blind.

When that no longer

Works,

I stand at the famous

Tiananmen Square,

Stretching out my arms

In the charged air,

All alone---

A pathetic

Frail human figure---

Against the gleaming white

Vastness of the solid square,

Holding alone

The great might

Of the Rolling tanks,

My thin arms,

And my puny figure

Stopping the armoured column

Of the State

Via one, single human gesture

Caught on the celluloid

For others to see---

And inspire.

At that dramatic moment

Words become me

And I become

A concrete

Example of the

Unfailing

Human

PROTEST

Against everything

Unjust and vicious.

Words that carry their own

Charge and can do much harm

To status Quo

Than the conventional

Cannons.