‘Cries of the survivor’: Poem by Kreetina Rai, ACFA

Her voice cracking and shaking in pain,

Trying to see through her swollen eyes, in vain.

Her body smeared with blood, oozing from her injury,

She was raped and beaten, said the police and the jury.

Those men abducted her, took her to the place unknown,

Ripped her clothes, raped her and had beaten her, to break every bone.

Her wounds are deep, that brutality by those offenders,

Now the society is out on candle March, claiming to be her defenders.

“No!” She wants to shout out loud,

“Blow these candles, don’t let it make you proud.

You can’t be anyone’s defender, you are just a crowd,

That let something gruesome happen, so they can come out.”

“Those wounds are marks of your narrow-minded thinking,

These bandages are the chains of your Orthodox mentality, loudly clinking.

I am not a Victim, don’t make me one,

I am the Survivor of what this society had done.”

“You are out on road, doing strikes so I win this case,

How can you let something this brutal to happen in first place?

I don’t need justice, I need change,

But all I can get is much delayed justice, isn’t it strange?”

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– Kreetina Rai

MA English Sem 1

Apeejay College of Fine Arts