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Dissent Quotes

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Dissent Quotes

“Inevitably it follows that anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes an authority or established convention': a rebel. ...And if enough people come to agree with—and follow—the REBEL, we now have a DEVIL. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have ... GREATNESS.”

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Book:Rebels & Devils; A Tribute to Christopher S. Hyatt
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“Psycho-compulsion is therefore not just about instilling people with a so-called correct employability mindset. It is a mechanism for penalising deviation from what it defines as the right set of attitudes and behaviours. ‘What psycho-compulsion therefore attempts to do is silence alternative discourses to the neoliberal myth that you are to blame for your unemployment,’ said Friedli. ‘At the same time, it undermines and erodes alternative frameworks around which people can come together in solidarity to act against the social causes of worklessness.’ In short, psycho-compulsion not only pathologises and punishes a claimant’s dissent, it depoliticises the causes of joblessness (which discourages collective action), and it does so by resuscitating Margaret Thatcher’s earlier myth that unemployment can be reduced to character deficiencies.”

WorkMental HealthWorkersEmploymentDissentNeoliberalismMargaret ThatcherDepoliticisationPsycho Compulsion
Book:Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Crisis
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“There are many lay people and scholars alike, both with and without the Muslim community, who feel that the pure orthodox Islam of the fundamentalists could never survive outside the context of its seventh-century Arabian origins. Apply twenty-first-century science, logic, or humanistic reasoning to it and it falls apart. They believe this is why Islam has always relied so heavily on the threat of death. Question Islam, malign Islam, or leave Islam and you will be killed. It is a totalitarian modus operandi that silences all dissent and examination, thereby protecting the faith from ever having to defend itself.”

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Book:The Last Patriot
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“He explained, however, that the Eucharist is about the unity of the church. If a majority vote determined the matter, then the unity would be betrayed. He noted that some people in the church might not be ready to make this move. He would call a meeting, inviting those who might have reservations to come and express their worries … If they strongly dissented, we would have to wait.”

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Book:Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir
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“Consensus, while comforting and harmonious as well as efficient, often leads us to make bad decisions. Dissent, while often annoying, is precisely the challenge that we need to reassess our own views and make better choices. It helps us consider alternatives and generate creative solutions. Dissent is a liberator. So why do we punish dissent? Most of us believe that we are open to differing views. Some of us believe that we like challenges to our ideas. In practice, however, most of us dislike a person who believes the opposite of a position we hold, and we creatively look for reasons for his “error.” We tend to think of him in negative terms. He is a troublemaker who is wasting time and blocking our goals. We are quite willing to punish him, most often through ridicule or rejection. We are continually advised “to go along and to get along.” It is powerful advice for most of us who prefer to be “in” rather than “out.” We like being accepted and valued—and we know that if we stand up against the majority, we will be “on the outs.” We thus remain silent. Sometimes we even nod in agreement, not knowing why we are nodding—because we choose not to ask ourselves what we really believe. There is a price for this as well.”

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Book:In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business
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“The significance of free speech extends beyond individual liberties; it serves as a guardian of truth and a catalyst for societal introspection. By allowing dissenting opinions to flourish, we invite the crucible of debate to forge a refined understanding of complex issues. This unfettered exchange of ideas challenges the status quo, prevents the entrenchment of dogma, and empowers societies to adapt and evolve in the face of ever-changing circumstances.”

TruthUnderstandingEvolutionReflectionEmpowermentDebateComplexityDogmaChallengeDissent
Author:James William Steven Parker
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“Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. . . . Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

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Author:Robert H. Jackson
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“I am often described to my irritation as a 'contrarian' and even had the title inflicted on me by the publisher of one of my early books. (At least on that occasion I lived up to the title by ridiculing the word in my introduction to the book's first chapter.) It is actually a pity that our culture doesn't have a good vernacular word for an oppositionist or even for someone who tries to do his own thinking: the word 'dissident' can't be self-conferred because it is really a title of honor that has to be won or earned, while terms like 'gadfly' or 'maverick' are somehow trivial and condescending as well as over-full of self-regard. And I've lost count of the number of memoirs by old comrades or ex-comrades that have titles like 'Against the Stream,' 'Against the Current,' 'Minority of One,' 'Breaking Ranks' and so forth—all of them lending point to Harold Rosenberg's withering remark about 'the herd of independent minds.' Even when I was quite young I disliked being called a 'rebel': it seemed to make the patronizing suggestion that 'questioning authority' was part of a 'phase' through which I would naturally go. On the contrary, I was a relatively well-behaved and well-mannered boy, and chose my battles with some deliberation rather than just thinking with my hormones.”

YouthAuthorityIndependenceWordsRebellionDissentHormonesMemoirsDissidentsFree ThoughtContrarianismHonorificsHarold RosenbergOppositionism
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the locals really believe what they are told, and do they truly revere Fat Man and Little Boy? I have been a visiting writer in several authoritarian and totalitarian states, and usually the question answers itself. Someone in a café makes an offhand remark. A piece of ironic graffiti is scrawled in the men's room. Some group at the university issues some improvised leaflet. The glacier begins to melt; a joke makes the rounds and the apparently immovable regime suddenly looks vulnerable and absurd. But it's almost impossible to convey the extent to which North Korea just isn't like that. South Koreans who met with long-lost family members after the June rapprochement were thunderstruck at the way their shabby and thin northern relatives extolled Fat Man and Little Boy. Of course, they had been handpicked, but they stuck to their line. There's a possible reason for the existence of this level of denial, which is backed up by an indescribable degree of surveillance and indoctrination. A North Korean citizen who decided that it was all a lie and a waste would have to face the fact that his life had been a lie and a waste also. The scenes of hysterical grief when Fat Man died were not all feigned; there might be a collective nervous breakdown if it was suddenly announced that the Great Leader had been a verbose and arrogant fraud. Picture, if you will, the abrupt deprogramming of more than 20 million Moonies or Jonestowners, who are suddenly informed that it was all a cruel joke and there's no longer anybody to tell them what to do. There wouldn't be enough Kool-Aid to go round. I often wondered how my guides kept straight faces. The streetlights are turned out all over Pyongyang—which is the most favored city in the country—every night. And the most prominent building on the skyline, in a town committed to hysterical architectural excess, is the Ryugyong Hotel. It's 105 floors high, and from a distance looks like a grotesquely enlarged version of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco (or like a vast and cumbersome missile on a launchpad). The crane at its summit hasn't moved in years; it's a grandiose and incomplete ruin in the making. 'Under construction,' say the guides without a trace of irony. I suppose they just keep two sets of mental books and live with the contradiction for now.”

DeathGriefJokesUniversityArchitectureIronyPropagandaDissentTotalitarianismNorth KoreaSurveillanceMind ControlAuthoritarianismIndoctrinationGraffitiSouth KoreaKim Jong IlKim Il SungDoublethinkJonestownPyongyangKoreansTourism In North KoreaDrinking The Kool AidMooniesRyugyong Hotel
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“ہڈ کا احاطہ کرتا ہے، ہاتھ بندھے ہوئے پیچھے کی طرف. پلیٹ تبدیل کرنے پر تلخ ہارگمن کی گند میں ہوا ہوا ہوا وقت کونسا ہے؟ ڈاکٹر کاپی جج واہارڈن یا کوئی نہیں؟ میں اپنے آپ کو تہھانے بادل میں ناپسند کرتا ہوں جہاں گندگی کی نمک پسینہ کی تاریخ بند ہے رسی پہلے سب سے تیز ہے اس کے بعد کمزور جکڑے ہوئے، کٹوری کی گونج کے ساتھ جہاں پرندوں اور مکھیوں نے ان کی زوال کو دوبارہ ڈالا میں اپنا اضافہ دوبارہ بناتا ہوں بڑھتی ہوئی واحد ہے. الفاظ کے دانو سے غیر جن کے پاؤں برباد شدہ کائنات کو پسند کرتے ہیں ہر وقت زندہ رکھنے کے لئے میں نے کبھی جھاڑیوں کا سامنا نہیں کیا ان لوگوں کا ایک خاندان جو موت کے لئے جنم دیا جاتا ہے.”

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Book:প্রিয় পচিশ - কবিতার বই
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“The danger of wokeism lies in its propensity to label dissent as heresy, leading to the cancellation of individuals for expressing opinions deemed 'unacceptable.' In a society that values free speech, the act of canceling someone for their viewpoint, even when expressed through comedy, is a troubling trend. Comedy has historically served as a powerful tool for social commentary and dissent, and stifling it under the guise of political correctness erodes the foundations of a vibrant, free-thinking culture. True progress is achieved through dialogue, not through the suppression of voices, even those cloaked in humor.”

ComedySocietyDangerDissentHeresyPropensityCancellationUnacceptableWokeismFreespeech
Author:James William Steven Parker
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“Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity.”

PoliticsHistoryHumourCommitmentPoliceLoyaltyRussiaCommunismGenerosityIronyBoredomCharmMediocrityBureaucracyExileDissentTotalitarianismAllegianceMoscowArgumentsDetention1968KafkaGorbachevCzechoslovakiaArrestNelson MandelaPrague1950s1970s1980sCliches1988Vaclav HavelBad CrowdsCharter 77Zdenek Mlynar
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“One must avoid snobbery and misanthropy. But one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it. This criticism would be effortless if there were no "people" waiting for just such an appeal. Any fool can lampoon a king or a bishop or a billionaire. A trifle more grit is required to face down a mob, or even a studio audience that has decided it knows what it wants and is entitled to get it. And the fact that kings and bishops and billionaires often have more say than most in forming appetites and emotions of the crowd is not irrelevant, either.”

WisdomPoliticsStrengthRebellionDissentContrarian
Book:Letters to a Young Contrarian
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“I have long been moved by Rosa Luxemburg's assertion that 'freedom is always the freedom to think otherwise,' and thus I've been attracted to contrarians, to people whose instinct is to go against the grain of officially accredited views - especially those accredited within their own circle of progressive thinkers. This has its dangers, to be sure.”

DissentFreedom Of ThoughtContrarianFreedom Of ConscienceNonconformists
Book:The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies
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“If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.”

DissentCivil Disobedience
Book:Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
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“In an article titled "The Ex-Communists," she analyzed how these McCarthy loyalists had simply switched allegiances. Instead of demanding communism as they had earlier, they now called for unconditional loyalty and cooperation in denouncing others for the sake of freedom and democracy. They still had a cause, just a different one from before. The new cause, the right cause, she continued, had a totalitarian catch to it. By turning democracy "into a cause," something that would arrive in the future and to which the present must be devoted, the present became unfree. The idea of futurity destroyed the present moment. How could one escape this destruction of the present by fear of the future....?”

FreedomDissentFear Of The FutureMccarthyismRed ScareMccarthyEx CommunistsRight To DissentTotalitarian Democracy
Book:Unlearning with Hannah Arendt
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“Anti-Americanism is now the mother's milk of the American educational system. Many schools in the United States teach that capitalism is exploitative and American foreign policy is imperialistic. Patriotism isn't taught in American schools. This needs to be understood. The sins of America's past are emphasized while the country's virtues are eclipsed. The achievements of capitalism are denied by environmentalists, socialists and anarchists whose voices have poisoned the well of higher education to the bargain. The older generation has been asleep at the switch, not looking too closely at what their children have been taught. And now the damage is far advanced, and the country's bureaucracies are packed and crowded with people who haven't a clue. Oddly, the United States is undermined by a national psychology that tolerates sedition and treason as if these were legitimate forms of dissent.”

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Author:J.R.Nyquist
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“The complexity of modern federal criminal law, codified in several thousand sections of the United States Code and the virtually infinite variety of factual circumstances that might trigger an investigation into a possible violation of the law, make it difficult for anyone to know, in advance, just what particular set of statements might later appear (to a prosecutor) to be relevant to some such investigation.”

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Book:You Have the Right to Remain Innocent
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“Strange are the ways of democracy; everyone disagrees with everyone else and such dissent is considered a good thing. Stranger are the ways of dictators; once they have coerced all their subjects to agree with them, they spread their evil wings across their borders to secure the nod of the rest of the humanity. That is how dictatorships usually end. If a dictator does not aspire to be a world hegemon, he could be forever, limited only by the fact that even dictators are mortal.”

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Author:R. N. Prasher
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“Even when alternative views are clearly wrong, being exposed to them still expands our creative potential. In a way, the power of dissent is the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives. “Authentic dissent can be difficult, but it’s always invigorating,” [Charlan] Nemeth [a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley] says. “It wakes us right up.”

UnderstandingCreativitySurpriseDissentAssumptionsNew PerspectivesAlternative ViewsInvigoration
Author:Jonah Lehrer
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“Good disagreements are the bedrock of communities. Good disagreements happen when people with different kinds of expertise and points of view talk and listen to one another, and when we try, honestly and pragmatically, to determine the best course of action for our whole community. Our differences make our decisions stronger. Democracy presumes that we can behave as one community, caring together for our common life, and disagreeing productively and honestly with one another. Demagoguery rejects rejects that pragmatic acceptance and even valuing of disagreement in favor of a world of certainty, purity, and silencing of dissent.”

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Book:Demagoguery and Democracy
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“The other argument [about the Iraq War] was about argument itself. It characterized any argument about policy (whether, in fact, Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction and whether regime change could be effected through an invasion) as unnecessary, dithering, disloyal, and possibly even deliberately evil, since the correct course of action was so obvious. Major media outlets demonized dissent. In a democracy.”

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Book:Demagoguery and Democracy
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“ओह मैं मर जाऊंगा मैं मर जाऊंगा मैं मर जाऊंगा मेरी त्वचा धधक रही है मुझे नहीं पता कि मैं क्या करूंगा जहां मैं जाऊंगा मैं बीमार हूं मैं सभी आर्ट्स को बट में मार दूंगा और शुभ को छोड़ दूंगा शुभा ने मुझे जाने दिया और तुम्हारे लौड़े के तरबूज में रहने लगी काले नष्ट हो चुके भगवा पर्दे की अप्रकाशित छाया में अन्य लंगर हटा लेने के बाद अंतिम लंगर मुझे छोड़ रहा है मैं अब और विरोध नहीं कर सकता, मेरे कॉर्टेक्स में एक लाख कांच के शीशे टूट रहे हैं मुझे पता है, शुभा, अपने मैट्रिक्स को फैलाओ, मुझे शांति दो प्रत्येक नस दिल तक आँसू की एक धारा ले जा रही है मस्तिष्क की संक्रामक लपटें अनन्त बीमारी से बाहर निकल रही हैं अन्य तुमने मुझे कंकाल के रूप में क्यों नहीं जन्म दिया मैं दो अरब प्रकाश वर्ष गया और भगवान की गांड को चूमा लेकिन मुझे कुछ भी अच्छा नहीं लगता है मैं एक से अधिक चुंबन के साथ मतली महसूस करता हूं मैंने महिलाओं को मैथुन के दौरान भुला दिया है और संग्रहालय लौट आया हूँ धूप के रंग वाले मूत्राशय में मुझे नहीं पता कि ये घटनाएँ क्या हैं लेकिन वे मेरे भीतर घटित हो रही हैं मैं सब कुछ नष्ट कर दूंगा शुभा को मेरी भूख को दूर करने और बढ़ाने के लिए शुभा को देना होगा ओह मलय कोलकाता आज गीले और फिसलन वाले अंगों का एक जुलूस लगता है लेकिन मुझे नहीं पता कि मैं अब खुद के साथ क्या करूंगा मेरी स्मरण शक्ति दूर हो रही है मुझे अकेले ही मृत्यु की ओर ले जाने दो मुझे मैथुन और मरना नहीं सीखना था मुझे आखिरी बूंदों को बहाने की जिम्मेदारी नहीं सीखनी पड़ी पेशाब के बाद अंधेरे में शुभा के पास जाकर लेटना नहीं सीखना था फ्रांसीसी चमड़े के उपयोग को सीखना नहीं पड़ा है नंदिता की छाती पर लेटते समय हालांकि मैं अलेया की स्वस्थ आत्मा चाहता था ताजा चीन-गुलाब मैट्रिक्स फिर भी मैंने अपने मस्तिष्क के प्रलय की शरण में जमा किया मैं यह समझने में असफल हो रहा हूं कि मैं अभी भी क्यों जीना चाहता हूं मैं अपने भ्रष्टाचारी सबर्णा-चौधरी पूर्वजों के बारे में सोच रहा हूँ मुझे कुछ अलग और नया करना होगा मुझे बिस्तर पर सोते समय आखिरी बार मुलायम त्वचा के रूप में दें शुभा का भोसड़ा मुझे याद है कि जिस क्षण मैं पैदा हुआ था उस समय की तेज धार वाली चमक थी मैं निधन से पहले अपनी मौत देखना चाहता हूं दुनिया का मलय रायचौधरी से कोई लेना-देना नहीं था शुभा ने मुझे कुछ पल तुम्हारे लिए सोने दिया हिंसक सिल्वर गर्भाशय मुझे शांति दो, शुभा, मुझे शांति दो मेरे मौसमी कंकाल को आपके मौसमी रक्त प्रवाह में नए सिरे से धोया जाए मुझे अपने शुक्राणु से अपने गर्भ में अपने आप को बनाने दो अगर मैं अलग-अलग माता-पिता होता तो क्या मैं ऐसा होता? क्या मलय उर्फ ​​मुझे बिल्कुल अलग शुक्राणु से संभव था? क्या मैं अपने पिता की अन्य महिलाओं के गर्भ में मलय होता? क्या मैंने अपना कोई पेशेवर सज्जन बनाया होगा शुभा के बिना मेरे मृत भाई की तरह? ओह, जवाब दो, किसी को ये जवाब दो शुभा, आह शुभा मुझे अपने सेलोफ़ेन हाइमन के माध्यम से पृथ्वी को देखने दो हरे गद्दे पर फिर से आ जाओ चूंकि कैथोड किरणों को चुंबक की चमक की गर्माहट के साथ चूसा जाता है”

LifePoetryDissentSixties CultureHungryalismStarkelectricjesus
Author:Malay Roychoudhury
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“People weren't just angry about it. They were still afraid. Fear is a powerful, often irrational emotion, and mass fear... has the power to shake any society to its core. As long as the world remembered, they would live in fear of all cryptids-- regardless of whether or not any individual among us was truly dangerous. Of course, not everyone supported stripping cryptids of all right. But dissenters were few among a dangerous and violent many, and most ignored the problem. Submission was the only solution they could conceive of to fix my problem. But with the imprint of Clyde's fist still throbbing in my stomach I was less interested in fixing a problem than in becoming one.”

FantasyProtestUrban FantasyDissentMenagerieRachel Vincent
Book:Menagerie
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“What happens to a highbrow literary culture when its fault lines-along caste, class and gender-are brutally exposed? What happens to the young iconoclasts who dare to speak and write about these issues openly? Is there such a thing as a happy ending for revolutionaries? Or are they doomed to be forever relegated to the footnotes of history? This is the never-before-told true story of the Hungry Generation (or 'the Hungryalists')-a group of barnstorming, anti-establishment poets, writers and artists in Bengal in the 1960s. Braving social boycott, ridicule and arrests, the Hungryalists changed the literary landscape of Bengal (and many South Asian countries) forever. Along the way, they also influenced iconic poets, such as Allen Ginsberg, who struck up a lifelong friendship with the Hungryalists.”

LifePoetryRevolutionProtestDissentGinsbergCountercultureMalaySixtiesSamir
Book:The Hungryalists
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“Overlooked in this ominous depiction might be our country’s best- kept secret: in dealing with the most challenging issues of every gener- ation, resistance to duplicitous civil authority and its corporate enablers has defined our quintessential American story.”

HistoryRevolutionSocial JusticeResistanceCivil RightsProtestDissentAmerican RevolutionSocial HistoryJeff Biggers
Book:Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition
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“Any government's condemnation of terrorism is only credible if it shows itself to be responsive to persistent, reasonable, closely argued, non-violent dissent. And yet, what's happening is just the opposite. The world over, non-violent resistance movements are being crushed and broken. If we do not respect and honour them, by default we privilege those who turn to violent means.”

DemocracyProtestFreedom Of SpeechDissentPeaceful ProtestArundhati RoyOn Terrorism
Author:Arundhati Roy
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“Preparation - Poem by Malay Roy Choudhury Who claims I'm ruined? Because I'm without fangs and claws? Are they necessary? How do you forget the knife plunged in abdomen up to the hilt? Green cardamom leaves for the buck, art of hatred and anger and of war, gagged and tied Santhal women, pink of lungs shattered by a restless dagger? Pride of sword pulled back from heart? I don't have songs or music. Only shrieks, when mouth is opened wordless odour of the jungle; corner of kin & sin-sanyas; Didn't pray for a tongue to take back the groans power to gnash and bear it. Fearless gunpowder bleats: stupidity is the sole faith-maimed generosity- I leap on the gambling table, knife in my teeth Encircle me rush in from tea and coffee plateaux in your gumboots of pleasant wages The way Jarasandha's genital is bisected and diamond glow Skill of beating up is the only wisdom in misery I play the burgler's stick like a flute brittle affection of thev wax-skin apple She-ants undress their wings before copulating I thump my thighs with alternate shrieks: VACATE THE UNIVERSE get out you omnicompetent conchshell in scratching monkeyhand lotus and mace and discuss-blade Let there be salt-rebellion of your own saline sweat along the gunpowder let the flint run towards explosion Marketeers of words daubed in darkness in the midnight filled with young dog's grief in the sicknoon of a grasshopper sunk in insecticide I reappear to exhibit the charm of the stiletto. (Translation of Bengali poem 'Prostuti')”

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Author:মলয় রায়চৌধুরী ( Malay Roychoudhury )
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