Your Choice And Mine! 

R Jayachandran (aka Jayachandran Ramachandran) is a son of this brown earth who earns his bread as a businessman and salvation as a poet. He is the Managing Director of the Narmada group of companies. He is also a known human rights defender and political activist in Thiruvananthapuram city, Kerala State, India. He is the General Secretary of the Civil Rights and Social Justice Society (CRSJS), Chief Coordinator of the Rajiv Gandhi Literacy Fund (RGLF), Governing body member of the Thalasthana Vikasana Council (Capital City Development Council), Working President of KHRWS Employees’ Association and a former General Secretary of the Thiruvananthapuram District Congress Committee of the Indian National Congress party. His poems have been published in many anthologies in India and abroad and also in some local magazines. He writes mostly in English and occasionally in his mother tongue Malayalam on a variety of topics including love, romance, war, nature, and contemporary socio- political issues that tug at his heartstrings.

He was awarded the ‘Distinguished Poet’ certificate and adjudged the ninth prize winner in the Ninth International Rabindranath Tagore Poetry Competition -2020 and recently his poem “Destination Unknown’ was on the shortlist for the IPR (Indian Poetry Review) Annual Poetry Award 2021.

Whether to cover
or uncover partly or wholly,
reveal just a little bit
or everything or nothing.
That choice is yours!

I have my choices too
they are mine alone.
Whether to look
at what you want me
to see or not to look
these are my choices
to look or not to look
even if you show off.

But what you chose to cover
from head to toe
or toe to head
is none of my business
and if anybody else
makes it their business
to dictate, to impose,
and you want to resist,
then, then suddenly
it becomes my business too,
nay my duty,
to join you in yelling at them
and telling them to back off!

Go! Cover yourself up
if that’s what you want.
Walk with head held high
proudly in your hijab
through these streets
of our motherland India.

Turn back at them
match their hate-filled
Jai Sri Rams,
with Allahu Akbars!

I am sure Rama wouldn’t mind
neither Allah, for both taught
to love not to hate.

You are not alone sis.
Many sons of the soil
are there to back you up
and daughters too…

…with not just the tricolor
alone in their hands.Jai Hind!

Notes: Muskan, a Muslim student in Karnataka state, India was recently heckled and threatened by a group of Jai Sri Ram shouting Hindutva fanatics for wearing a hijab to her college. She stood her ground and bravely yelled back at them ‘Allahu Akbar’. This poem is dedicated to her.

Jai Sri Ram – a salutation to the Hindu God Rama
Allahu Akbar – a Moslem salutation to God
Jai Hind – a patriotic salutation to India