The most dangerous thing

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]OR Your honest earnings to be looted is not the most dangerous thing

Police beatings are not the most dangerous thing

The greedy traitorous fist is not the most dangerous thing.

To be rounded up by the State while sitting peacefully is bad/ to submit to silence is bad/

But these are not the most dangerous things

To be drowned in the cacophony of corruption is bad but not the most dangerous/ to study in the light of the fireflies — to pass time with fists tightly clenched – are bad but not the most dangerous

 

The most dangerous is when life slips quietly out of a corpse—when it does not rage to stay

To resign to the monotony of home-work-home – that is the most dangerous

When our dreams die is the most dangerous moment when time stops even as your  wrist watch clocks it

The most dangerous eye is the one that has forgotten to look as if with a loving kiss: but has a dull degrading repetitive vision

The most  dangerous song is the one parroted like a boring lesson even while standing like a goonda filled with hubris at the door of the activist

The most dangerous moon is the one that rises in dismal courtyards after a riot but does not hurt your eyes as if with chilli powder

The most dangerous direction is the setting sun of your soul

And a bit of its dead light pierces the east of your body

 

For Your honest earnings to be looted is not the most dangerous thing

Police beatings are not the most dangerous thing

 

 

[The poem is written by Paash. Paash was the pen name of Avtar Singh Sandhu,  a poet from Punjab, who was  killed by Khalistani extremists in 1988]