You—Mr Fifty-Six.
Mr Vishwaguru.
Tell me—
how many speeches
does it take
to bury one silence?
You remember
every birthday.
Every medal.
Every moonshot.
Every festival.
Every camera waiting
for your smile.
But when students
stood with books
instead of bowed heads—
your voice
went missing.
When questions
filled the streets
more honestly
than your slogans,
your silence
became your longest speech.
Tell me—
where does your voice go
when young dreams
are carried home
on grieving shoulders?
Does it lose its way
through tear gas?
Or does it fear
the language
of dissent?
The world heard you
counting—
six…
two…
eight…
Numbers floated,
meaning fled,
and somewhere
a nation lowered its eyes.
Not because numbers matter.
But because truth does.
And truth
has never found
a permanent seat
beside your microphone.
When breath itself
became a luxury,
when flames
burned brighter
than hope,
you found
another slogan.
When an ancient land
burned in the east,
you found
another photograph.
When mothers
counted ashes
instead of birthdays,
you found
another stage.
Always another stage.
Never the wound.
You draped the nation
in giant promises,
while quietly
its rivers,
its mountains,
its ports,
its mines,
its forests—
drifted
towards two faithful letters
of the alphabet,
as though a republic
were merely
an inheritance
waiting
for favoured hands.
You called it development.
The empty plate
called it hunger.
The unemployed hand
called it abandonment.
The farmer,
the worker,
the student—
called it
what history
always calls it
when power feeds
a chosen few
while asking the many
to clap.
You taught us
that propaganda
is loud enough
to drown
a mother’s cry.
That flags
can be stitched
over broken promises.
That patriotism
is easiest to sell
to those
who are denied justice.
But you forgot—
questions
do not die.
Books
do not surrender.
Ash
remembers fire.
Universities
remember every voice
that was dragged away.
And silence—
silence
keeps a ledger
no government controls.
One day,
the banners
will fade.
The giant portraits
will gather dust.
The applause
will return
to ordinary hands.
And history—
that patient,
merciless witness—
will not ask
how many speeches
you delivered,
how many statues
you unveiled,
or how many birthdays
you remembered.
It will ask only this—
when your people
needed
one honest sentence…
why
did you choose
silence?
***
Madras Courier originally ran as a broadsheet with a poetry section. It was a time when readers felt comfortable sharing glimpses of their lives through verse. If you have a poem you’d like to submit, do email us at [email protected].
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