New Delhi: Actor Atul Kulkarni narrated a Hindi poem about the violence that took place on 20 July in an Instagram video. The poem contrasts the suffering of the common man with the apparent indifference of those in power, repeatedly asking whether the police and elected representatives felt any remorse for the brutality students faced.
On Monday, Delhi Police lobbed tear gas shells and wielded batons on Sansad Marg as thousands of protesters marched toward Parliament, where MPs gathered for the first day of the Monsoon Session. The protest, called by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) for education reforms, was largely joined by student groups and Gen Z. Many protesters were severely injured; videos showing the brutality went viral on social media.
Kulkarni’s poem asks policemen who directed them to do so whether they cried after going home and slept peacefully.
“Did you go home and sleep peacefully,” sits at the emotional core of the poem.
Roughly translated into English, the Hindi poem reads: “O policeman with the baton, did you go home and weep yesterday? O Member of Parliament, my representative. Did you go home and sleep peacefully yesterday? I wept tears of blood yesterday. I couldn’t sleep, wondering whom to curse. My child screamed in her sleep, for in her dreams, she saw your baton.”
The actor further expressed that he wants a government that brings tears to everyone’s eyes in compassion, not fear. He wants a government before which everyone’s hands tremble, not out of terror, but out of accountability.
“I live within these borders; Then why are snipers aimed from across them? I want a government; That shares the pain of every citizen,” he added, commenting on the pictures from the protest where policemen stood with batons aimed at the protesters.
Kulkarni ended his poem with these final words: “To those who send me trolls, you too are fellow travellers, my companions. All of us were born…From the womb of Mother India …Me, you, them, everyone. But still…O Member of Parliament, my representative, did you go home and sleep peacefully yesterday? O policeman with the baton, did you go home and cry yesterday?”
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)