Speak up; this little time is enough,
Speak; before this body and tongue pass away.
Speak up, for truth is still alive,
Speak and say whatever you want to say.
– Faiz Ahmad Faiz in
"Bol ki lab azad hain tere"
When the going is good, there is little need to read Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), Faiz Ahmad Faiz (1911-84) or Gajanan Muktibodh (1917-64), poets of distinction who wrote about the human condition with empathy and energy in Bengali, Urdu and Khadi Boli, respectively. Perhaps that is why they are more talked about and quoted than actually read or understood. But when tides turn, their lines become to secularists what hymns and bhajans are to the devout.
Faiz beseeched his fellow citizens to speak at a time when silence had been elevated to the highest level of virtue in a country veering dangerously towards an institutionalised culture of violence. With insight that somehow only poets and artistes seem to be endowed with, he foresaw that the vicious cycle of silence, acquiescence, tyranny, fear and hush would ultimately suck the society into the dark hole of anarchy, barbarism, cruelty, deprivation and inhumanity. But who responds to the calls of bards when bandits are hovering in the background? Clearly some do – if not next door, then in the neighbourhood; if not now, then decades later. That is the curse and reward of those who speak to eternity.