The Panther is dead.
Namdeo Dhasal, 64, Poet of the Underworld, died at the Bombay hospital in South Mumbai on 15 January 2014, ending his long battle with the world of caste and colorectal cancer with a perpetual victory of his invincible words. Let those words continue to flow in the body of the eternal revolution like A Current of Blood.
Speculations on a Shirt
…
A human being shouldn’t become so spotless.
One should leave a few stains on one’s shirt.
One should carry on oneself a little bit of sin.
Man, You Should Explode
…
Wage class wars, caste wars, communal wars, party wars, crusades, world wars
One should become totally savage, ferocious, and primitive
One should become devil-may-care and create anarchy
Launch a campaign for not growing food, kill people all and sundry by starving them to death
Kill oneself too, let disease thrive, make all trees leafless
Take care that no bird ever sings, man, one should plan to die groaning and screaming in pain
Let all this grow into a tumour to fill the universe, balloon up
And burst at a nameless time to shrink
After this all those who survive should stop robbing anyone or making others their slaves
After this they should stop calling one another names white or black, brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya, or shudra;
Stop creating political parties, stop building property, stop committing
The crime of not recognising one’s kin, not recognising one’s mother or sister
One should regard the sky as one’s grandpa, the earth as one’s grandma
And coddles by them everybody should bask in mutual love
Man, one should share each morsel of food with everyone else, one should compose a hymn
To humanity itself, man, man should sing only the song of man.
Excerpts of both the poems are from A Current of Blood.
Read more poems here.