HOPE FLOATS, RESISTANCE THRIVES. THEY ARE GOOD ARMOUR TO MEET 2021 WITH. Then, there is poetry. There is verse and songs from the protests. Or Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise”, William Ernest Henley’s historic “Invictus” or then come home to Sahir Ludhianvi, whose birth centenary it is in 2021. An icon among Indian poet-lyricists, he wrote 50 years ago in the poem “Khoon Phir Khoon Hai”:

A Year of Losses but Hope Floats, Resistance Rises | NewsClick

“Zulm ki baat hi kya, zulm ki aukat hi kya,

Zulm bas zulm hai, aaghaaz se anjaam tak,

Khoon phir khoon hai, so shakl badal sakta hai,

Aisi shaklen ke mitaao to mitaaye na bane,

Aise shole ke bujhaao to bhujaaye na bane,

Aise naare ke dabaoo to dabaaye na bane”

(What is oppression, what is its standing,

Oppression is but oppression, from beginning to end,

Blood is still blood, it can take myriad forms,

Such forms that cannot be erased,

Such embers that cannot be extinguished,

Such slogans that cannot be repressed.)

The author is a senior Mumbai-based journalist and columnist who writes on politics, cities, media and gender. The views are personal.