The Speaking Flower

A flower grew on tropical soil
– its petals waxen white,
– its centre crimson;
– the people knelt
– and smelt her
intoxicating fragrance
– and then felt
– mysteriously—free.

Soon the flower
– was transplanted
– onto yonder shores,
– it blossomed,
– sprouted limbs,
– swaying in the wind,
– it breathed the breeze
– of liberty.

One day,
– the flower returned;
– striking her original soil
– her colours ignited;
– from her petals
– crimson rose enflamed:
– ‘even the searing heat
– cannot erase the blood
– on the street.’

White simply said:
– ‘I am truth;
– how long will they use
– brute force
– to besmirch me?’

The people in
– the tropical garden
– hailed the
– speaking flower,
– but the dour vines
– choked and encompassed it,
– till it was no longer free.
– It plucked the flower
– and placed it
– in a throttled
– bottle-neck vase
– and here the flower remained,
– for eleven years
– seven months
– and
– twenty-seven days.

It did not wilt,
– it did not stint
– its words.

Its green stalk spoke:
– ‘stem the politics of hate
– we will forever commemorate
– the martyrs of
– eight, eight, eighty-eight*.’
– No one could silence
– the speaking flower!

The vines called her ‘foreign’
– certain her luminosity
– would irradiate
– the soil;
– they did everything to foil
– her speech.
– But to the people
– in the tropical garden
– by Inya lake,
– she was simply,
– Aung San Suu Kyi
– —the daughter of democracy.

.......June 19, 2007 Sagari Chhabra....

(celebrating Aung San Suu Kyi’s 62nd birthday while still in captivity)

* uprising of 8.8.’88 when thousands were gunned down by the military.