Kafila normally never publishes poems. But sometimes, we make an exception. Because poetry give voice to memory in ways that prose can’t always. And because we must never forget November, 1984.
Guest Post by Jaspreet Singh
30 YEARS ON
One hears that the grass has grown again
and old domes have been plated
with gold. Children of ashened fathers
have acquired autos and crystals, and Lutyens’
stones have bloomed
One hears about the impossibility
of living in the past, difficulties of forever
remaining within eddies of anguish
One hears the bankers and media-anchors
talk about the need of the hour
to move on
(Never mind the periodicity of Gujarat, Trilokpuri…)
Ruination of language and biology
and justice – For them merely burned
incense-sticks
or a lost cricket match
Why then before each year comes to an end
I, like so many others,
get Novemberized?
And, you, Jagdeep Kaur, how you have greyed, I hear your choking
whispering, witnessing, voice still
When I woke up…
My eyes could not understand
Why I refused to see
What they had seen
A garden or metal or marble might hold some of your losses
But I am not sure time
will smell like time again
Hope this entire nation tells its children what happened
As Primo Levi said, “Or may…
Your offspring avert their faces from you.”
Hope this entire nation mourns
and performs the deep crystal work
with un-iced solitude and togetherness and
engraves it all on its hearts.
No one can order anybody to unremember 84, especially not
the perpetrator
One knows this all too well
(not after 3 days
or 3 decades)
Dark clouds—
still ascending over Delhi.
To forget is to necklace the dead twice over with rubber tyres
To forget is to stop caring
To forget is to repeat
To forget is to cease loving each other
To forget is to die
Let us never and Never forget
those erased simply because they were
trapped in a certain body
Ash particles, floating in air. They are so near us
The dead
Jaspreet Singh’s latest book “Helium” is published by Bloomsbury. He lives in Toronto.
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 
Thank you for this, Jaspreet.
The perniciousness of censorship and revisionist history (AKA Geroge Orwell’s “memory hole” in…1984!) makes it all the more necessary to take on the much-maligned and thankless role of whistle-blower.
Canada, too, has its dark secrets, though fortunately not as bloody.
In 1985, Brian Mulroney revoked the Public Order Bill–a disguised and more repressive version of the War Measures Act–in effect from 1971 to 1985, unbeknownst to nearly all the population. Apologists for P-E. Trudeau scoff, saying that after the autumn of 1970, the provisions of neither law were actually used, when, in fact, we cannot possibly know anything of the sort, censorship and secrecy being part and parcel of the nature of the beast. In fact, until then, “innocent” Canada had been subject to martial law used for civilian purposes through more than half of its history, truly a sorry record for the world’s first postmodern nation. Trudeau, in fact, ruled under martial law, or the threat of such, for virtually his entire career.
With such hidden threads running through our social and political culture, it is not surprizing that we now tolerate a government that sabotages democratic legislation and institutions by administrative and financial manipulation. It necessarily turns a blind eye to the dirty secrets of other “friendly” regimes, such as India, the “miracle” of modern capitalism.
One last ironic note: in 1984, the Clash played in Canada for the last time.
Best regards, my friend.
Nigel
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