Remembering those days

India got independence from the British in 1947. But the independence brought the partition, based on religion. Pakistan was for Muslims. India was for Hindus. The political leaders of India believed in two nation theory. But the war between East and West Pakistan proved that two nation theory was a wrong theory and Muslim unity was a myth. The leaders thought if they could divide people who lived for thousands of years together on the same land, all the conflicts will be solved and everybody would live happily ever after. But they were wrong. A million people died during the partition. Hatred increased. Muslim and Hindu fundamentalism grew more than ever. After 66 years of the partition, now we see that India and Pakistan are having nuclear bombs, Indians are in constant fear of Pakistani terrorists, Pakistanis are getting killed by talibans and drone attacks, Bangladesh’s secular fabric has been destroyed by the Islamists.

If there were no partition of India, there would not have been war in Bangladesh in 1971. 3 million people would not have died, 200,000 women would not have raped.

Today I am celebrating Independence Day of India by reading ‘September on Jessore Road’, a poem by Allen Ginsberg and all the deaths and the homelessness of Bengalis.

Millions of babies watching the skies

Bellies swollen, with big round eyes

On Jessore Road–long bamboo huts

Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts

Millions of fathers in rain

Millions of mothers in pain

Millions of brothers in woe

Millions of sisters nowhere to go

One Million aunts are dying for bread

One Million uncles lamenting the dead

Grandfather millions homeless and sad

Grandmother millions silently mad

Millions of daughters walk in the mud

Millions of children wash in the flood

A Million girls vomit & groan

Millions of families hopeless alone

Millions of souls nineteenseventyone

homeless on Jessore road under grey sun

A million are dead, the million who can

Walk toward Calcutta from East Pakistan

Taxi September along Jessore Road

Oxcart skeletons drag charcoal load

past watery fields thru rain flood ruts

Dung cakes on treetrunks, plastic-roof huts

Wet processions Families walk

Stunted boys big heads don’t talk

Look bony skulls & silent round eyes

Starving black angels in human disguise

Mother squats weeping & points to her sons

Standing thin legged like elderly nuns

small bodied hands to their mouths in prayer

Five months small food since they settled there

on one floor mat with small empty pot

Father lifts up his hands at their lot

Tears come to their mother’s eye

Pain makes mother Maya cry

Two children together in palmroof shade

Stare at me no word is said

Rice ration, lentils one time a week

Milk powder for warweary infants meek

No vegetable money or work for the man

Rice lasts four days eat while they can

Then children starve three days in a row

and vomit their next food unless they eat slow.

On Jessore road Mother wept at my knees

Bengali tongue cried mister Please

Identity card torn up on the floor

Husband still waits at the camp office door

Baby at play I was washing the flood

Now they won’t give us any more food

The pieces are here in my celluloid purse

Innocent baby play our death curse

Two policemen surrounded by thousands of boys

Crowded waiting their daily bread joys

Carry big whistles & long bamboo sticks

to whack them in line They play hungry tricks

Breaking the line and jumping in front

Into the circle sneaks one skinny runt

Two brothers dance forward on the mud stage

Teh gaurds blow their whistles & chase them in rage

Why are these infants massed in this place

Laughing in play & pushing for space

Why do they wait here so cheerful & dread

Why this is the House where they give children bread

The man in the bread door Cries & comes out

Thousands of boys and girls Take up his shout

Is it joy? is it prayer? “No more bread today”

Thousands of Children at once scream “Hooray!”

Run home to tents where elders await

Messenger children with bread from the state

No bread more today! & and no place to squat

Painful baby, sick shit he has got.

Malnutrition skulls thousands for months

Dysentery drains bowels all at once

Nurse shows disease card Enterostrep

Suspension is wanting or else chlorostrep

Refugee camps in hospital shacks

Newborn lay naked on mother’s thin laps

Monkeysized week old Rheumatic babe eye

Gastoenteritis Blood Poison thousands must die

September Jessore Road rickshaw

50,000 souls in one camp I saw

Rows of bamboo huts in the flood

Open drains, & wet families waiting for food

Border trucks flooded, food cant get past,

American Angel machine please come fast!

Where is Ambassador Bunker today?

Are his Helios machinegunning children at play?

Where are the helicopters of U.S. AID?

Smuggling dope in Bangkok’s green shade.

Where is America’s Air Force of Light?

Bombing North Laos all day and all night?

Where are the President’s Armies of Gold?

Billionaire Navies merciful Bold?

Bringing us medicine food and relief?

Napalming North Viet Nam and causing more grief?

Where are our tears? Who weeps for the pain?

Where can these families go in the rain?

Jessore Road’s children close their big eyes

Where will we sleep when Our Father dies?