The First Cry

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For quite sometime I've been contemplating to write something about the dramatic unfolding of events in our country: protest movement, birth of a second Gandhi in Anna Hazare, the TRP-boosting telecast, creation of a youth icon and blah, blah. As a student of History I know how pathetically Gandhi had to fast and roam in east India when communal killings were taking place in the west. His magic had almost proved ineffective at the time of need. The crowd that pressed for JLB behaved exceptionally calm all through. I can only pray God that the event remains ever peaceful in the days to come.

And I scrambled my papers if I had ever written anything dealing with protest. Eureka, I found it. This poem I wrote some fifteen years ago.

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T H E_F I R S T_C R Y

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A gust of wind

rising suddenly

From the motionless surface

of the limitless sea

Blew past the dried branch

of the tree

Standing lonely

on the crevice of the promontory

And shrugged its branches

to produce

A raucous rasping sound--

Solitary and profound.

The sound miserably failed

to make any impression

On the ubiquitous indifference

of the unsympathetic environs;

Yet, the emaciated tree

Blissfully unmindful

of the reaction-proof neighbourhood

Registered the feeling--

It had cried alone

splitting its sediment of agony

And straining its physique fractured.

The silence broke

at least for an occasion

Again to merge

into the flourishing ‘silentdom’,

The feeble scream failed to wake

The frozen dreams, the pent-up urges

And the heap of grudges

smouldered and smoked

Billowed and vanished

into the jungle abandoned.

Thus the first cry

So feeble yet spontaneous

Emerging out of dark womb

in expectation of life and love

was so rapid to expire

Daring to announce

in a fearless authentic tone

The maiden slogan

of a would-be hurricane

In an unwavering rhythm

Addressing aggressive

to the swarming crowd

and its conspiring patrons.

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Composed at Port Blair on 12-11-1996

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By
A. N. Nanda
Coimbatore
01-09-2011
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