Somnath Mukherji

Workers wait for 6 months for NREGS wages in Aila Affected Areas in the Sunderbans even amidst existence of widespread hunger.

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Published in the Frontier Weekly Vol. 42 No. 48, Jun 13-19, 2010

“My family of seven needs 3 kilograms of rice everyday, but I can manage only 2 kgs,” says Fazlu Khan, squatting beside his bow-legged nine-month-old daughter with a distended stomach. Fazlu is one of the 17 families whose homestead was washed away by Aila. Now they live on someone else’s land under a tarpaulin roof ready to leak in the next rain.

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Published in Telegraph, 25th March, 2010

Chaash nei, chaal baish taka Kg, bhiksha amil (No agriculture, rice costs Rs 22 a kilo, no alms for the beggar)

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Published in Sangbadmanthan, 1st March, 2010

The much anticipated Operation Green Hunt has started in fits and starts. It is a high stake hunt. The government is waiting to re-assert its authority in the forested reaches of Central India. The corporations are waiting for unhindered access to the wealth underneath the land. The Maoists are [perhaps] waiting for the atrocities to begin so that the discontent takes deeper roots into the hearts and minds of the adivasis. And the adivasis…what are they waiting for? We do not know. We do not know because we never asked them.

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Published in Mainstream Weekly on Nov 14th, 2009

“My family of seven needs 3 kg of rice every day, but I can manage only 2 kg,” says Fazlu Khan squatting behind his bow-legged 9-month-old daughter with a distended stomach. Fazlu is one of 17 families whose homestead was washed away by Cyclone Aila in May 2009. Now they live on someone else’s land under a tarpaulin roof ready to leak at the next rain. 

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Published in Infochangeindia.com on 26th Feb, 2010

Adivasis in southern Chhattisgarh are caught between the violence of the Maoists and the state. The state has suppressed and criminalized dissent, shrinking the democratic space, and narrowed any possibility of a political solution to the violence ravaging the region, write Somnath Mukerji, Umang Kumar and Garga Chatterjee.

(Above): Bhima Mandavi along with his mother stand before the burnt remains of their home in the Chhatisgarh village of Badepalli. [JAVED IQBAL photo]

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Published in The Siliconeer on July 14th, 2009

Sliced out of history
Like raw flesh under a dark hide
Rosy, irrigated by tiny droplets of blood
Taut barbed wires stretched around
On cold foggy mornings dew drops hang forlorn
Rows of sheds like factories
Numbered like kennels
Ominous smoke rises obscuring the sun
 
Today, I remember in hushed voices
The raw flesh of humanity, flushed with blood
Pink, it could go deeper, I think
 
I wake up in the middle of night
With claws long and aquiline
I run, my dream chases me like a stray mongrel
Through the dark alleys, breathless
Stepping over small motionless bodies
A deafening silence
My dream behind, I run
 
I hear cheers from rooftops over the alleys
Splintering the air. Silence
And then all is gone
 
I look for my chasing dream
I see the glint of barbed wire at the end of the alley
A little girl blocks my way
What you have behind your back?
A knife she says, carved out of my father’s bone

A new teacher will come into this world
She will teach you that a newborn’s breath is the sweetest thing in the world
She will remind you to be careful using superlatives:
You will now say: A newborn’s breath is one of the sweetest things in the world

He will teach you –
Whatever you plan will never succeed
And there is beauty in this

She will teach you –
That there is order in this chaotic world
That, what seems to be ordered is sitting on a heap of chaotic elements

He will teach you –
That you have no control over the important continuities of this world
You brought as much joy to your parents as he does to you
Take care of your parents if you want your child to take care of you

She will teach you –
The pleasure of feeding your child
That many people in the world cannot do that
Do not take away food from a parent’s hands

He will teach you –
That seeing a child grow up is every parent’s right
No parent, no child, can be collateral damage
Stand up against those who think so

With him around, you will have lesser time to struggle for others
But he will make you realize its importance

She will teach you –
That no one is independent in the world
You always depend on others and others depend on you
It does take a village to raise a child

He will teach you –
That you cannot leave behind a collapsing world
That greed has to be restrained
That human beings are a part of nature not its master

She will teach you –
To operate on fewer hours of sleep
Juggle more things
Be less obstinate and more patient

He will teach you that there is beauty in repetition

She will build bridges over gaps you never knew existed

You will do all you can and love the child for whatever he grows into
You only have control over your actions
The Universe conspires in many different ways to produce the results
The teacher will teach you that

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Published in August issue of Agenda.

http://infochangeindia.org/Agenda/On-the-move/Partitions-of-the-mind.html

Her long hair hits the ground like a lash as she sits on the floor, gyrating her small torso. Dressed in a white sari bordered in red with a big vermillion bindi on her forehead, Monu Kishko looks as if she is in a trance. A single Santhali mother, she is playing the role of a roja (witch-doctor) in a play focussing on adult literacy and primary health concerns of the villagers.

Some children and their mothers are sitting under the straw roof that extends outwards from Monu’s house, while the men are sitting on their haunches on the mud road that runs by the side. Under a starlit sky, a group of villagers are enacting a play called Andhokarer Alo (light in darkness). The children laugh in glee as a blind-and-hunchback duo approach the roja with a drunken friend who has contracted tuberculosis.

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Published in The Telegraph, Calcutta, 24th June, 2008