Art, theatre, paintings, movies, videos, books, verse, monuments and museums are media to relive and rekindle memories of  years gone by, particularly years of pain and injustice. Through this poem, the poet relives the horrors of November 1984 and rues the complicity of the government in this crime against humanity.

1984

There had been J & K, Assam,
Manipur, Godhra and much more,
What rightly haunts Delhi still
are memories of nineteen-eighty-four.

Still are in agony the victims of that
naked dance of pseudo-power,
the death of civilization in the country
following the Operation Bluestar.

The operation where Government used
its machinery against its own folks;
the single instance of its kind in the world,
at which humankind still mocks.

To them, God is dead, tolerance vanished,
righteousness gone, and humanity is no more.
They have slept for ages and now;
if someone wakes up, they cannot endure.

One, who comes out of the slumber,
is here always known as a rebel.
And ironically, democracy
is of, by and for the people.