Mother India

Fifty years of chaos and confusions

She has witnessed and now silently mourns

As a mother forgives her children

She has done that; they are still insane


Ere half a century, she was in chain

She was silent and cried in pain

Her children fought and freed her then

She asks now: Where disappeared all of them?


Where are they who loved her?

Who sacrificed their lives for her;

Why no doubt, today there is none

Whom you can ask to die for her!


--Saswat Pattanayak, Peoples' Poet, 1998 

CopyLeft: Saswat Pattanayak 2003-2008