Poems by
Ramanujam Meganathan

Consumer of History

a poem by Ramanujam Meganathan

Banking on inherited memories rejuvenates me.
As and when I remember the memories
That me and my people long to cherish
And those me and my people despise to relish
To remember not as memoirs
But as inerasable scars.
The nation, the geography, the war, the leaders
The language, the temples, the forts and those statues,
And the ethnicity
Then comes the innate xenophobia
That declares me and my people as more equal than others;
And others do live in History’s mischief,
Bloodshed as part of the living
And for the living of me and my people,
And the making of the histories
That I and my people have today
As glorious moments of the past for the present
But for those who produced this wicked ‘hero’
That is unexplainable.
The Unforgettable’s enigmatic inexplicable
And this makes me feel the heroic deeds
And the unheroic moments as great periods
And people who built that fort and this temple.
I only consume History.