History of Justice
Outside the kids are bursting firecrackers by the side
of our compound wall. Grandmother is
screaming at them. Mother smiles knowing
they won’t listen. Grandfather once stayed up
late in the night on the window of the first floor
waiting for the hoodlum who pissed every night
on our wall, splashing him with a good whole
bucket of cold water in the frosty winter night.
He’s been dead since long, our grandfather.
But grandmother hasn't forgotten the battered face
of the man who was tied to a post outside the house
for having beaten his wife to a pulp. And grandfather
lunging his fists on the poor man’s face. Grandmother
standing by the window afraid she had married a monster.
But what she remembers most is the face of her young husband
during the time of the revolution when she went to see him
in the lockup, where he was hung naked upside down for two days
with mud shoved in his mouth by the Bengali Inspector who
kept saying, ‘Feed him the land, that is what they are fighting for’.
* A DIFFERENT VERSION OF THE POEM WAS PUBLISHED IN PRINT EARLIER IN THE ANTIGONISH REVIEW
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Rohan Chhetri is an editor based in Delhi. His poems have appeared in Rattle Magazine, Eclectica, 34th Parallel, Weyfarers and The Antigonish Review among others.
