Mother Earth has been the sole constant witness of rise and fall of different powers on her benevolent breasts. She has seen the rise of Alexander the great; Tamburlaine the great; the tyrant Hitler; and so on including the (over)ambitious British empire. Not only the rise, she has also been the mute audience of the fall! She has never complained – neither for the rise, nor for the fall. One can allude to the celebrated lines of great Dr. Johnson:
“Delusive Fortune hears th' incessant Call,
They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall.”
The rise and fall in powers of a person is something that is and will be ascribed to their fortune. However, there has been a constant power in existence parallel to this darkening and fading power of fortune. This is the power of such a great height that even Alexander the great could not gain; neither the power president Obama can think of it, nor the lunatic fundamentalist of ISIS can even imagine of it! One can have a glimpse of this great strength in the lines below:
“Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windowes, and through curtaines call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?”
Authors and Poets and the people gifted with the expression to convey their message in an extraordinary means have always the power, the freedom, the capabilities and an energy to challenge any authority; and not only challenge, they can even make the established monarchs go ramshackle! They can challenge God; they can wage a war against the heaven; they can cow down hell; virtually they can defeat death also! Writers can do anything they like with the gift they have since their birth. I find myself in no need to give you the details and memoirs of what the pen has done from time to time to give us a proof that obviously the ‘pen is mightier than the sword’! Writers and artists are born with immense power that can even challenge and put God in the judiciary. They are and will be (no matter how many times they face death or exile) the mouthpiece of this world. The world expects so much from the writing society – and we must not let them turn their hopeful eyes from us!
The cowardly attack on the office of Charlie Hebdo is despicable and we the writers’ society stand united to condemn it. However, let the extremists and fundamentalists know that our pen will not stop and go on drawing the picture of world like always. The writers do understand and respect God more than the so-called ‘in the name of’ people.
Our first issue of the journal Ashvamegh will be dedicated to those martyrs with pen who were killed cowardly but only to flame millions of other writers’ hearts with their inkpots and pens ready to script the martyrdom and cowardliness!
Alok Mishra
http://twitter.com/PoetAlok_Mishra
