On the auspicious day of the birth anniversary of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, an eminent philosopher and the 2nd President of India, who dedicated his birthday to the great teachers of this country, I would like to put forward a proposal for those concerned high-ups to think that a prestigious national award given every year to an outstanding coach, preceptor or mentor in the field of sports is named after Dronacharya, the great Guru of Pandavas and Kauravas. In truth, Dronacharya symbolizes a crafty, bias, prejudiced guru who derides and abhors those belonging to the margin or brink while greatly favouring only those from the creamy layer of the mainstream. Given this unpalatable fact that entails the sage-guru Dronacharya, it would be better if the name of the Award be changed. 

Filling up an on-line form

He had to fill up an on-line form.

He paused a while before he could decide as to put a tick or cross in the very first column that said --'I am not a robot.'

He scratched the left side of his head for a second or two and put a tick.

It was not the first time that he, a latest version of super Robot, was blatantly lying.

Having finished filling up the form with some more lies, he wore an impish smile from ear to ear while seated on a latest model of multi-dimensional revolving chair.    

 

One more young unarmed black man, 20 year old Daunte Wright, fell victim to the bullet of a white policewoman just two days back in the same US city of Minneapolis where George Floyd breathed his last under the relentlessly pressing knee of a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, last year. We are simply bewildered to see their never-ending color prejudice even in this twenty-first century AD. The question arises: Are they (color-prejudice ridden white people) really civilized deep down at their heart or in their collective consciousness?  Or do they feel threatened somewhere in their subconscious when they see black people roaming as freely as them? While America is desperate to homogenize whole world with their way of life, they find dark human skin color beyond homogenization. Sometimes, the BBC flashes the news about some old Asian men or women being violently pushed or kicked in broad daylight on the roads. Is it their white over-smartness or cowardliness? Is it their own version of courage or revelation of fear? Is it not a serious psychological problem they are unknowingly suffering from and making the whole of America suffer from? What is this White-people dominated America up for, after all? Whatever may it be, it is disgusting.

All this and more prompted me to write the poem ‘O America!’ which was featured in the Gorkha Times a couple of days back and I’d shared the same on my FB Timeline and many readers read it some of whom have left their very encouraging words of appreciation. Nepali version of the same poem is likely to be published in Kantipur, a popular Daily from Kathmandu.           

 

O America!

-          Manprasad Subba

 

O America!

Did you hear?

A young Nepali-speaking poet  

has blatantly named you a Coward.

 

Coward you are undoubtedly.

You would fear Vietnam as a ghost.

Now, Kim Jong Un is insomnia to you.

You, a heavyweight boxer,  

tremble with fear seeing a featherweight boxing champion

of a tiny island.

You fear the dark skin

as children fear the darkness of night.

You carry that fear in your knee

and at the first opportunity

your white fear comes down heavily

to press coldly the smooth dark neck.

 

Yesterday in broad daylight on a footpath  

you mercilessly white-kicked an Asian sister of mine.

Are you so much afraid

of the face coloured by the eastern sun?

 

In fact, your white skin is not white,

but faded with fear

and all the time scared of other colours.

Long ago when you came across those red faces,

with red blood running in them

you were so dangerously afraid

that until you drove them to near extinction

your white fear remained as lead with whiteness faded away.

 

Your white fear is so aggressive, so ferocious

it knows only to be aggressive.

(Fear eventually learns to be fearsome.)

Your huge eagle on the tower

eerily laughs in fear – Ku Klux Klan… Ku Klux Klan…

 

Dangling a handcuff at one side of your belt and a pistol on the other side,

do you want to do policing the entire world?

Police just the other form of fear that grips those in power.

You a policeman, Derek Chauvin,

on whose knee is tattooed the map of America

which is but stained with dark blot of George Floyd’s dark neck

and the size of that un-erasable black blot

has grown from Tennessee to Minneapolis.

 

Martin Luther King Jr. had once gone from Tennessee to Washington D.  C.

and created a rainbow of his dream

that arched across California and Virginia.

So afraid were you of that fragrant dream

you, hiding from all eyes, fired at the eyes of that dream

But Martin’s dream was already in the innumerable eyes

aflame with determination.

 

With your thirteen stripes, red and white,

you want to keep the whole earth bound and tied  

and those fifty stars clustered in a corner

blaze in such a way as to blind the eyes of the whole world.

 

Many say this is the power of America.

But I say --

What more terrible exposure of fear could there be than this?

            

________________________________________________ 

 

                                                                         April 01,  2021.