{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{Shaheen Bagh: A love letter
to REVOLUTION in the Shakespearean tragedy
of Indian Democracy.}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
On 31st December ‘19, while Delhi recorded its lowest temperature in a century at the strike of 12, the place banged into cheers of festivities. Tunes of national anthem chimed as frosted humans drank chai, greeted inquilab into the new year concurrently protecting themselves from gusts of cold winds with scarce blankets and abundant love of the community. Among the demonstrators was a certain bilkis dadi, aged 82 and now a time’s most influential.
To corresond in words what Shaheen bagh was/is, is an impossible task. Endeavour, I will though, attempting to put in writing the reverence of human that was Shaheen Bagh.
In political terms: It was an indefinite sit-in against the Citizenship amendment bill; now an act led by women, in opposition of the gross monstrosity that the “government” was subjecting on protestors of CAA across the country and student universities by illegally entering and beating students (few of them to fatalities).
In metaphysical existence: Shaheen bagh was unlimited in its holding, becoming a tactile consciousness of a bleeding nation and a liberating solace in times of chiming hatred. A declaration of love to the country, from its people. It’s latitudes left me dazed in its identity as the cradle of love and an ethereal revolution of art with the relentless declaration of the cultural consciousness on the walls marked, the stairs painted, and the tapestries recounting, inheriting incarnate ardency. A corner nursed kids and adults with a makeshift library and crayons; the women birthing the space with little food and boundless love. Poets, musicians, artists, filmmakers, it’s environing were made true into a political art festival; the fable of it, an immortal love story. A sight of a democratic metamorphosis of history and a chronicle of the women’s movement. It existed apt breathing of the country’s diverse living with all sects of community in attendance. And I stood there. Basking in its glory, amidst all the pain and hurt that lied beneath it all, and believe me, it was in abundance. But Hakuna Matata people. It endured and lived. A utopian existence fighting dystopian rules.
Shaheen bagh was. And is. And will be. A harsh fairytale.
In commemoration.
