Author: Ritwik Ghosh
Pages: 92
Year of Publication: 2015
Price: Rs 200
ISBN:
978-93-5045-118-2 (9789350451182)
About the Author:
Ritwik Ghosh was born in India. He was educated in India and the United States. He writes within the Indian artistic tradition.
Teaser:
The slave ship
I hear all around the chiming ocean waves,
I am sea-swept in lofty sojourning,
I feel the fresh sea breeze on my vivacious sails,
I know the grand, endless vast expanse, of freedom.
Over the bubbling ocean, uncounted souls I have imprisoned,
Ravished, ravaged souls and genius of Africa’s peoples,
A holocaust, humiliated and murdered
By the greed and cruelty of slavers oppressed.
None hears their voices, for their voices have been muffled,
Their manacles chain them, they are enslaved, imprisoned and re-imprisoned,
They are huddled without space, without air, and without light,
Their families are with rude hands separated,
Sister from brother, infant from mother,
The girl child, too young to understand what happens and why,
Awaits her sorrows and her deaths,
By the greed and cruelty of slavers oppressed.
The slavers jeer amongst themselves,
Certain that the Gods never punish their sins,
Certain that history will praise those who bully most,
Certain, that their oppression will last eternal,
Certain, that their hypocrisy will endure,
That their families will deny their crimes,
That their families will forget their crimes.
While I sail my mast most free, many within me are enslaved.
Over the glittering of the rolling waves,
With unfettered yearning I sail,
Over the murmuring of the fandango waves,
Over realms mellow and passionate,
I embrace the shimmering cerulean sea,
I see the glacier, islands and archipelago,
I see the whale, turtle and dolphin waft,
I sail through  ocean tempests free,
By the wave-touched bay and seashore I hear
The palmtree leaves gently murmuring,
By the coral atolls and clear waters,
I see the coelacanth, the seadragon,
The nautilus, the giant squid, and the blue-ringed octopi,
I am calm, with tranquil freedom,
I swim in the azure ocean,
With sorrowful, sad, free, dark, midnight-blue waves.
Contents:
36 poems