Claim The Night

The city lights were dimmed.

Though the clock stroke twelve,

It was midnight,

But nobody was asleep.

Everybody was wide awake,

Everybody was angry.

With the slogan “We Want Justice”,

They kept marching.

Everywhere could be seen,

Men and Women,

holding a candle,

Or a placard, a banner,

Walking, sweating, and shouting,

Protesting against the fall of humanity,

And claiming their rights.

A bunch of fearless protesters

Carried the torch in their hands.

The burning flames turned their faces red

But it was not apparent,

Which was burning more,

The flame of the torch

Or the fire of the protest.

78 years ago at the midnight,

when our country earned its Freedom,

It was an hour of celebration.

I was not born at that time,

But I always tried to visualize that night

in my imagination.

Firecrackers filled the midnight sky

As if it was an untimely Diwali.

Or perhaps, it felt like welcoming a new dawn,

When the Sun rose at midnight.

But how did it look after 78 years?

The midnight sky was still awake,

But this time,

It was burning with fire.

I also took part

in a small gathering in our colony.

The streets of the cities were roaring,

But in our candle march,

we were silently walking.

Nobody talked about anything,

Not even about ‘Abhaya’,

the girl who dared to fight.

She fought till her last breath

But would she get any justice?

Everyone was worried.

And that’s why

we flagged off our protest seeking

‘Justice for Abhaya’.

As the aged grandmother blew the conch,

It gave everyone goosebumps.

The conch bearer was also a candle bearer

“Those who can envision the idea,

They can enlighten the path, too”,

A thought came to my mind.

In our silent march,

Everyone was holding a candle

In the name of ‘Abhaya’,

The girl who deserved to be alive

The girl who deserved to live happily with her dear ones

The girl who devoted her entire life

To serve the people of the nation.

And now, the nation was paying her back

By claiming in the union, “We Want Justice.”

The night of 15^th August, 1947

The nation was happy, smiling, greeting each other,

Distributing sweets in the joy

of earning the much-awaited freedom.

The night of 15^th August, 2024

The nation was shaken,

The nation was shattered,

The nation was grieving,

The nation was crying,

Every drop of their tears,

belonged to the girl who fought,

And the nation started off the protest for her,

Unanimously demanding, “Justice for Abhaya”.

As our candle march reached the end,

We stopped,

and keeping the candle on the ground,

We prayed.

Though the prayer ended after a minute,

We couldn’t move.

We stayed there for long,

We couldn’t turn towards home,

As the silence was talking aloud

of everything

that was left unspoken and unheard.

Finally,

A little girl from the crowd broke the silence.

She accompanied us from the beginning to the end of the march.

Watching us standing in silence,

she asked her mother,

“Why did we come here?”

The mother was confused,

what to answer her little daughter?

Then, affectionately, she replied,

“We are here for justice, my dear.”

“What is justice, Maa?”

The little voice asked.

“When someone does something wrong,

The person must be punished.

This is called Justice.”

The little one wasn’t satisfied with the answer.

“But Maa,

When I do something wrong,

You punish me immediately,

Then why are we begging for Justice, Maa?

Is the punishment only for daughters, Maa?”

The midnight sky was torn apart

with the question from a little heart.

The mother stood silent

As she had no answer

to give her little daughter.

The grandmother who blew the conch,

Then stepped forward,

and sat in front of the little girl,

“My dear,

It’s our fight,

Not only to get the Justice,

But also, to claim the night

so the cityscape can be filled

with the smiles and giggles of daughters like you.

We have to wait,

Until the Sun rises at midnight

To prove us that

Change is an obvious occurrence whenever the world roars.

That

Freedom for women is not a myth,

Rather,

It’s the truth

That will not be veiled anymore.”

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