Back in 2015, I published my first poem in the then recently launched The Bombay Review. It was long tirade on the what was then going on in the country with a liberal but naive rhetoric. It had been just a year after BJP had come to power. People were being slaughtered on the rumors they had slaughtered a cow when in fact it was a goat, students were persecuted based on their immediate identities and voices were being forced to stop speaking against anything but one thing. Imaginary enemies were being manufactured and I was turning from being a potential voter for BJP in the 2014 elections to someone beginning to be vehemently opposed to them.

While all these things played out on a national stage I have always ignored what was going around me. My own college campus was a ground for unprecedented authoritarianism and bureaucracy where students had simply no say in what was happening with their lives. Even the students slumbered when it came to any conciousness of this kind. The answers always came to a kind of hopelessness that nothing could be done but to finish up your allocated years at this institution peacefully and take an exit somewhere better. This is after my college saw a number of student suicides where the institution was trying its best for the truth not to reach media. This was after the college founder himself absconded after a police complaint against him for sexually abusing a nursing student was issued. He was later apprehended. My own roommate was once persecuted for criticising the mess food of the campus-hostel, where he previously used to stay, on Facebook after he got sick eating it once. His parents were called by the dean and, frankly, insulted. The post was forcefully taken down and an apology issued. I am sure these things are still ongoing. The question only was: why do institutions like these even exist? Is the government for protecting its people or only to horde on bribes that such fine establishments usually bring to its pockets?

I have stopped reading the news these days. The things that go on sometimes too unbearable to read about. My political consciousness asleep for long and waiting. But it is not like people are mindlessly taking the bullshit. When it comes to the bullshit of BJP trolls on social media and elsewhere people do seem to now be fighting back. This was not the case back in 2016 when the JNU sedition case happened. At least that is how I remember things as. I could be wrong. Maybe there were always as many people as now I think them to be. I have been trying to get back to news for some time now. You should see more of them in the coming days.

See you tomorrow,
Avi.