Thursday, May 5, 2022

Mothers of Languages

Maaen Hazaar-chaurasi!

 Morning has broken

the home minister has spoken

 "No more English in the North-East, or the West

 East or South,  Hindi is the best!!"

 "Macaulay left but his grandchildren still linger."

 Venkaiah shouts: "Why let the English tongue malinger??"

 Did Venkaiah say this in Hindi? We do not know. 

The  English newspapers  recorded the  show.

  Ajay Devgan fired his volley 

and such a Drishyam it was. 

Out came Kangana with a rally,

This Hindi Queen, she made Sanskrit the cause.


These are our principal stakeholders, 

who without perusing files or folders, 

 Think they measure the national pulse

 And  issue decrees on impulse!

 Ours is a nation of  believers in  the mother tongue

 who  have  ostensibly of   tongues and mothers  sung


Look at the lesser Minister of State.

 who  declares without debate 

the expulsion of  sons and daughters,

 into  the stagnant cess of non Hindi waters. 

 Meanwhile the Don from the Planning Commission,

with a partner in crime from the  D O Science  Mission

 In smooth English enunciates the  New Education Program

Which makes it clear why all of this is  such a sham!


Every policy,  strategy, every rule and  bit of learning

 is framed in English from the previous century's turning.

Each mother tongue has been snipped and curbed and tied

For    masculine men can do unto mother tongues little beside,

 what continues to be  done to mothers and daughters worldwide??

 Mother tongues were treated very badly, 

Shredded , pierced,  ripped, snipped  and now,  sadly, 

 Our mother tongues are starkly bereft.

 for  their literatures have been ravaged and left,


 Our macho leaders know not this

and  a unisize mother, seek amiss.

Blinkered, patriarchal,  atrophied  and brutal.

 Such men  rule that a  myraid tongues, fetal, 

Add up in  their math to  one mother in total.


They forget , these myopic males

 about  mothers, the multi-form females.

In our subcontinent, a thousand tongues bloom 

carefully nurtured by loving mothers,

 Away from the  hostile  paternal fume

they gently lilt and sway like feathers.

 Ratna Raman


 


 


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