In the 2014 general elections, the BJP and its allies were able to form the largest majority government since 1984. The NDA’s combined vote share was at 38.5%.A BJP rally ahead of the 2014 general elections, in Ahmedabad February 20, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Amit DaveThis is the fourth in the five-part ‘Poems in Saffron Ink’ series. Read the first part here, second part here and third part here.The Wire presents the ‘Poems Written in Saffron Ink’ series that capture the present environment of divisive politics, with threats to freedom of expression, where minorities feel unsafe and incidents of mob lynching have become common.§General Elections. India. 2014. A refugee from Belief seeks a cell tonight.—Agha Shahid Aliwhen, in 1992, they cameknocking at the door, I could hearyou hide her in the bedroom,in the mirror-worked quilts—with their white stitchingrunning crisscrossacross the patches she’d sewn—she had tucked you intowhen you were a child—we had all slept in them sometime—so often that their threads were coming loosefrom the corners, like the door-framethat held it all together, frayingwith those knocks which were growinginto thunder—you were prayingfor the first timeas those unfearinggod-goons waved their swordslike benevolent gods—godliness, that madman wieldingsharp objects at different names—why did it matter that we never kissedthe floors of mosques with our foreheads,or ever walked the right way roundtemple courtyards;we just hid in quilt-tents,embroidered fortressesmade of thread and mirrors, deflectingthose words from the Gita we soldto the second-hand bookstore, fromthe Quran which we were supposed to follow,but knew only to quote in intellectualargument, to cry Ali’s nameto damn those who cried it—the divine was just a convenienceof being articulate:if I could say it like that, I’d have tradedplaces, offered you your own womb,from where I peered as you blanketedyour mother, as your father wept for beingsafe, only because he had this namehe didn’t choose to take; it isn’t easy to unstitchour names, or to drown themin that ganga-jamnithe goons’ grandchildren now cry in slogans,as they conceal their grandfathers’ swordsbetween their teeth and through their tongues,decked up with saffron and tinsel made from certainnames and certain quilts whose stitchesgave them away;ganga-jamni,so easily called secularism,too easily put into postcards we sendabroad and send ourselves, so easily forgettingthat pieces of card and postage stampsare never wide enough to holdtwo holy rivers,their waters polluted with those plastic bags,rotting garlands, those ashes of the hundredswho die before being scattered with their burnt-outnames into mingling currents that lapthe banks of the buried—do they knock at these graves,like they will at the door? nowagain, with their inked fingers—those blots will always look like swords—I am imagining things, as you say,as I imagined from insideyour belly the world ringing againstthe door-frame you were too swollento hold up with your own weight, or the daysyou spent in silence watching the doorthat—somehow—never fell,or the quilt that never gave—shall I wear it on my head?call it propaganda,let its alphabet run in embroideredcalligraphy down my nose, and throughthe veins creasing in my elbows, downto the deltas of a thousand tributariescaught in these inked handsI hold up—shall I read my fate?—for when they come knocking and I,un-wombed, too weak to bolt a door, or fitus into the fold of a quilt,how will I tell themHold off the earth awhile This poem was first published in The Missing Slate, 2015.Poorna Swami is a writer and dancer based in Bangalore.
