Samarth Grover Mid-Term Assignment

5. Write two poems that are triggered by news events within the last six months.    

Saadhar Card

My Saadhar number is 9902 4484 xxxx. It has my name, the name of my father, the year I was born in and my sex. On the back is the address of my house.
The Saadhar database has my eyes, my fingerprint and a really bad photo of me.

It was a dry morning,

There was nothing to do, not much to say,

But a new message to be read:

Have you linked your Saadhar yet?

There was not much to do, no qualms of being stamped,

So I got up and went to the Saadhar office.

The heavy, termite infested door creaked from the middle as I stepped in.

The office was bigger than the bellies of the 3 old, mediocre men that sat behind 3 old, magnificent tables
In front of these were 3 long, patriotic lines of all of us.

It seemed like an elaborate process, of collecting, clicking, stamping, spitting and smearing.

I was the last in line,

That moved 2 steps everytime,

My impatience made me run hands through my hair. I couldn’t wait anymore.

But my impatience took a seat, trying to keep the beat of my restless foot the same as 5 more people in this room.

While I waited, I had to wonder that maybe I actually need the Saadhar card.
Maybe it’ll help relieve the misery our ancestors have gone through.

But how could I even fathom that they will give me or any of us a new, unique ID.
They can’t capture the 100 sides of my smile,
their iris scan can’t cover the depth of our souls.
They can try and scan my fingerprints, but it won’t register the paint in them, or the charcoal,

Or the non-existent wages these hands have worked for.
But then I looked at the 3 old men and got amused by their thighs in the khaki shorts.

It was almost noon.

I can’t tolerate the sun at noon,
it reminded me of this kid who lost his ID card in the Syrian wars that he did not wage.
He lost along with it his parents and brothers and sisters.
He lost his home, his country to the rubble of greed.
His new ID was his dead photo on a beach and his new ID card is hidden in the poems of those who have already forgotten about him.

The greatest trait of this city was its anonymity and here I am ready to submit everything I possess.

Sadly, our IDs aren’t tangible. They are the fading colours of a flower.
And I carry my ID card in that flower,
fixed behind my ear.

I carry my ID card in fear, hiding in my skullcap
and I carry my ID card in only the orange of my national flag.

I carry my ID card in the shade of my red lipstick
and he carries his ID card in the barrel of his gun,
bulgingly zipped in his jeans, waiting to shoot down my desire to ever apply a different shade.

I carry my ID card in my surname and my inheritance of being your scavenger, your slave.

My ID card was burnt alive by the lord sitting in his chair of 2002 swords
and it wasn’t ever issued again for every action has had an equal and opposite reaction.

A 13 year-old I got to know never had an ID card. Hell, she didn’t even have a proper name.
A sling of abusive slangs is all her drunken father stamped her with.
Her first identity was forced on her,
when he sold her in exchange of the stink of his breath and the booze of his bottle.
Her ID card had a photo that did not have her face
kept with her pimp who leased it for hours on end
in exchange of ID cards that you and I use for currency.
Unaware flowers stolen from between her legs,
kept in old ceramic vases of this office.

When I reached close to the line, I heard this man saying,

“My ID card got lost with the black sewage I was working in,
and I had linked my Saadhar to my account.
What should I do? I’m really sorry! Please help me.”
To which the 3 old, mediocre men replied to in unison,
“Sir, if you are a sewage worker then you must be from the 4^th strata of our Saadhar database. According to the G.I.T.A rulebook, you are to search for it until found.
If you had been of the 3^rd strata, or the 2^nd or 1^st, then I could have given you a new ID.
But the 4^th strata IDs have been made untouchable for us by the software.”

Immediately after, I was handed a newspaper which had a comment by a Saadhar official and it read:
“From tomorrow, the process of each cow having its own Saadhar will begin.
If any skullcap or an untouchable shadow is present within 100 metres of an unattended cow, they’ll be flogged and it will be put in their ID criminal record.
Skullcaps even without the potential of a wrongdoing, comes with a criminal record. We can’t help,” he says “it’s mandatory in the registration process.”

I wondered then if the desire for our identity markers is all for them to condemn us, hate us, beat us, immolate our history, rape our culture and make the TV reporters remove even the blindfold, the only thing lady justice was allowed to wear.  

My Saadhar ID might tell you if I’m a male or a female but it won’t tell you how confused our sexuality are.

People roaming aimlessly in the outer circles of Cp do not carry their IDs. They sit in subways figuring out which exits to take.

My ID card is in the to and fro motion of the pedals of my rickshaw, the sweat dripped vest that’s sweating off my back, the black dust neatly settled in my lung, the sharp stardust unravelling cosmos in my eyes. My ID is stuck among people in the metro. My ID is trying to catch trains, to catch moments of content. My ID is trying to reach on time, but it fails.

You know how a city has the most clocks, and sometimes I feel that time has overlapped making everything rush and us late for every meeting, every moment. 
Making love slip away and hearts run-out. These overlapping clocks spinning away planets that were meant to revolve around each other.  

And like time, I do not have an ID. I have a million of them, overlapped and entangled in symphonies of the past.

And Saadhar will not tell you the flowers I like, the trees I’ve climbed on, the women I’ve loved, lips I’ve kissed, cigarette butts I’ve thrown, faces I’ve missed, strangers I’ve met, the food I wanted to eat but couldn’t afford, the clothes I could buy, but coped with the dignity of rags.
it will not tell you the nightmares I’ve had a craving for, the daydreams I could kill for.

It will not tell you the love for my city
I was born here, in this great graveyard of Delhi.

I love it more than I know.
I even have my own house here, which might not be a big deal for Delhites, but it is a big deal for Delhiwallas.

I march the streets of this city like it is the hall of my house. But it is a city of refugees like all the cities of this world. With people sitting on benches waiting to see family in a stranger’s face.

If you want to identify me, do not look at my deprived eyes, my crusted lips or my yellowed teeth. If you want to identify me, if you want to identify us, look at our hunger, the grumble of our anger, our patience to bear, our will to surrender.

Our president gives the sanitation workers an empty thanks, and calls them a part of this republic.
But he doesn’t give them the boots they need,
or the mask for their mouth and if dying in shit is there identity. Then we do not want these ID cards.
We do not want ID cards that deny hungry children food,
that can’t rescue women trafficked like cattle.
We do not want your forced IDs.

Your IDs will not solve the maze of this slum.
Your ID is not going to make it easy for me to breathe.
Your ID can not stamp me like one of your Indian cows.

My identification comes from the rage of our hunger and not from a number,
from my fight for a revolution that’s never gonna come.
My Id is hidden in roaring night tides.
My ID is smeared on the face of the moon.
My ID is in a thunder strike,

But it is not and never will be the one you have given me.

Because you cannot identify us. And a simple yet prejudiced, unlaminated card is not good enough.
So the next time they ask you to link your Saadhar,
show them all your IDs dangling from your trench coat
the ones made of broken bricks and stolen hearts,
IDs that left a mark,
IDs that put you to bed,
IDs that stayed, when all was said
and then ask the 3 old, mediocre men, if they’ve linked their Saadhar yet?

8. Choose yourself and any two of your close friends and create visual figures based on them. Then create a short graphic story involving the interaction of these three figures. 

The 3 people are the superego, ego and id. The angel and the devil sitting on each shoulder. 

3. Write two poems, each using repetition of a word or a phrase. Think of our classroom discussion where we realized how repetition achieves different effects, whether it be lending weight, creating irony, exploring multiple meanings of the same word or phrase, among others. 

 The American Nightmare

The American dream is dead,
like the 747 that crashed,
high above the ground,
soaring like a bald eagle

The Statue of Liberty is scared,
like a woman in a dark alley,
full of drunk white jocks.
Even when the dream was alive,
it was
a white lie.

The American
nightmare will be
America being called a
TERRORIST
which they are.
The American nightmare will be
WikiLeaks leaking the blood that
America has shed on a land
they now think is theirs.
America is the supervillain.
America is Thanos.
White America was our alien-invasion.

America, America the post-script of Nazi Germany;
the glorified white mask of nuclear capitalism,
glorifying their obsession with the ‘end of the world’,
the ‘Armageddon’,
the bada-bing bada-boom Alien invasion
because of the
white man’s
GUILT,
his fear of the other,
the outsider.
His paranoia,
his primitive masculinity held
in the bullets of his revolver,
making up for his primeval masculinity
held in the strap of his Playboy underwear.

America, America, the greatest country in the world.
America, America, the land of opportunity,
America the home of the brave.
Brave America, brave with a condition,
brave with a button,
brave with a gun,
brave with their gutless fat,
brave like a racist rat. A rat with an orange wig.

“Hey old man, were you there in Vietnam?”

“Yes son, no one who came back, came back sane.”
Pops bottle, spreads his crotch wider.

America, the glorifier of purging,
the evil voyeur of the world, America.
America, the superpower,
selling super charged cars,
racing with guns a blazing.
Kids, why don’t you go out!
Look! There’s an ice-cream truck.
Oh the ice-cream’s over, care for a magnum shotgun,
maybe an uzi,
how about an ak, eh?
Well, come on kids,
I gotta make a buck,
how about this poppin piece.
Oh don’t worry about the police.
They gonna get you anyway,
you the black dogs,
in presumably stolen black cars.

The doom American Homeland Security predicts won’t come
from outside the stratosphere of this world
but from outside the rigid,
walled borders of the US of A.
You, the “civilized” man partying while there’s time left here,
owe me.
You owe us, the ticket for a bus,
or at least a good seat in it.
You owe the debt to the uncivilized blacks,
browns,
yellows
whose civilization you destroyed,
spines you rattled,
packaged in the bubble wrap of Christianity,
shipped without fragile markers.
Flogged with a culturally decaying whip,
to follow deceased morals,
distorted orders.
You owe us blood,
blood that covers your face scarlet,
blood that you haven’t yet lost,
blood from your beer belly,
blood from the cones of KKK.
Blood for your invasions.
Blood from your blood money.
You owe us our chains.
You owe us the doom we face today.
But we never wanted your blood.
We don’t want your blood.

America, smart America, knows very well,
there is no confessional that’ll rid them of their sins,
no reason that’ll justify their wars,
knows very well that we’ll come for revenge, at least for reparations.

But we don’t want your blood.

And America, America, in these trump times,
thieving 1500 kids away from their parents,
like pulling apart 2 joined locks.
A chain of white cops lining brown tots
to shoot them
in cages.
Just a little better than
how you used to keep
your slaves.
These kids will come for you,
those slaves will come for you,
I will come for you.
We’ll come for our spot, their slot,
they, the breaker of chains won’t
use dragons to bring you down.

Nobody will have to bring you down America,
you’ll do that to yourself,
you’ll oversell a nuclear winter
as a Christmas carol.
Your pot of gold will be an empty barrel,
your oldest legacy
turned to ashes.
Your phoenix stolen.
Your vanity dead.
Your flag
BURNT. 

Black Scavenger

Black
the failing shadow of Ambedkar.
Black,
the face of India.
Black
its old sewers.
Black
the slush within them,
black,
the scent of its smell.
Black
the desperation of man.
Black
the hunger he faces.
Black
the dreams he raises.
Black
the caste he has stuck.
Black
the day he dies.
Black
our current leader.
Black
the tent of his circus,
black
the noses of his jokers.
Black
the colour of banned notes.
Black
the noise of the media.
Black
the hand of the relentless law.
Black
the blindfold.
Blinded
the people.
Black
the days ahead.
Black
won’t be our revolution.
Our revolution won’t be
black. 

2. Read 'Learning the Poetic Line: How line breaks shape meaning' by Rebecca Hazelton - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/70144/learning-the-poetic-line. Write two poems where each poem has at least two deliberate line-breaks using any of the "Wagner’s six S’s: speed, sound, syntax, surprise, sense, and space." In a small note after each poem, explain your usages of these line-breaks.

From the “crumbled poetic paper”

So I tripped over
a sunflower,
like a stupid
shooting star,
and I fell,
in a well,
that was all
dried up.
Hiding
in the dark,
a silent
bark,
a brick
floor,
like a brick wall,
absorbs my fall,
like a weak trampoline.
A shattered
skeleton,
a rattled spine.
Like butterflies
stitched
on
my neck.
Like a hot metal
pressing the seal
on my chest,
making my dysfunctional rib
cage
a prison cell,
these ribs rusted
prison bars.
Like the Sun flooding
the streets,
with the seed of
spring,
the deceit of
love,
the scent of
death.