It’s among the 26 poems written by Mamata that have been published in the form of a book ‘SIR – 26 in 26’, with the Bengal CM channeling her creative side to register her protest against the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls in her state.
On Tuesday, she distributed copies of the book, carrying the English translation of her poems originally written in Bengali, at a press conference in Delhi’s Banga Bhawan.
At the press conference, she unleashed a frontal attack against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, for the second day on the trot. However, she made it a point to underline that she has more than just usual political rhetoric in her arsenal.
Mamata said she wrote the 26 poems over a span of three days while in transit. A thread of anger against perceived injustice is weaved with warnings that power is ephemeral, in the poems.
For instance, consider the poem ‘Insignificant’. “Wait – that day is coming/The day you will understand the debt of life/And on that day, you will stand alone. Ruler or not – you will be shaken, you will be struck, you will fall.”
In ‘Explanation’, she writes, “Because if the sky still holds, moon, sun, planets, stars – then one day, you will lose everything. That day you will know – you’ll finally know/The prison will remain. The iron bars are calling. The mercury of rage is climbing. A fireball is coming, charging forward…”
Another theme of the poems is Mamata positioning herself as someone defending Bengal from Delhi’s overbearing presence—something that has also defined her politics, with the TMC playing the sub-nationalism card to deflate the BJP’s Hindutva push during the 2020 state elections.
In ‘Triviality’, she holds out a warning along these lines. “Listen, carefully Delhi – In Bengal there will be no silence, no dead calm. There – there rises, there floats the roar of people, their restless thunder.”
The plight of Sunali Khatun, the Bengali pregnant mother who was pushed back into Bangladesh after being branded an illegal migrant and later brought back on the orders of the Supreme Court, also features in the poem ‘Victim of Language’.
“Today I heard – a newborn child has finally seen the light of Bengal, that is, his country. But what if it had been a few days earlier? Then they would have called him a foreigner, an outsider…”
