PROBASHI- A Cultural News Magazine Volume 2 Issue 2 | Page 54

Probashi-Poetry Section

Readers Contribution

Awakening
Written in the context of ensuing General Elections

Amit Mukherji
Twinkle Twinkle little star
We always wondered what you are
Up and up in the World you go so high
Leaving us behind to die

This picture taken on June 5, 1989 shows an
unknown man (now popularly known as the Tank
Man) block an advancing column of Chinese Type 59
tanks rolling on Cháng Ān Dà Jiē leading to Tianmen
square where protest lead by University students
broke out in June 1989 against inflation, limited
career prospects, and corruption of the party elite. At
the height of the protests, about a million people
assembled in the Square. The protest was brutually
suppressed by Chinese governments in which an
unestimated number of people were killed. The
picture was clicked by Jeff Widener of the Associated
Press and has become the symbol of unarmed
resistance to state terror and strong arm tactics. This
protest picture symbolises the strain of the two
poems below- Awakening and The Golden Bird, in
which the poets gives voice to our disentachment
with the system by which out country is being
governed. Like the tankman did in Beijing, the Poets
extol us to take up the onus and be the part of the
change which we want to see.

The Golden Bird
Shonali Mukherji

Twinkle Twinkle little star
We always wondered what you are

The Golden Bird, they named you
and idolized you with love and devotion
by considering you equivalent to God
Their heart was full with emotion.

You came to us expressing your concern
You shared our sorrow together we mourned
You promised us a world of dream
You assured us land of honey a