paper bullets

I couldn't afford to buy a gun,
Not even that toy gun of few rupees
For a bullet and few cartridges!
I couldn't dare a dream without dream
So living among the corpses of unknown affiliations;
I thought of using some paper bullets
To fend myself off the stray bullets!
Don't you know bullet respects bullet?

Sometimes, it’s better instead to die holding a gun
However it looks funny, even with cartridges of paper
Then to allow myself harness with nose-pipes through intestines;
For here, in my land
Everybody is dumbfounded with each gunshot
And we all know, we always eat and speak, not with the mouth.

Yes, I thought of using paper bullets
For I know, I can afford to make paper bullets
For I have grown up with aspirations drawn from the books
For I have seen the tears of burning libraries and
Its tarnished scripts taking flight with ashes.
I thought, bullets made from paper,
They will do some kind of justice to all of us.
And the best part, we don't have to be a lousy illiterate first.
For heaven's sake, we will be using books
Though in a different form, then
There will be no extortion, no matter how we fare each chak-kouba.
I mean, we can all afford to sacrifice few books from our blurbs
And even more, by doing thus
We can flaunt the bullets, these paper bullets
Like a pen, like a…a pen in the pocket of ministers that they seldom nibble
But I am pretty sure, with all our aspirations
We will be using these bullets more often than not.

For a long time, since the day I was born a Meitei
I always wished to have a gun in my hand.
How it would have looked?
A gun in the hand of toddler Jayanta's hand,
And sounds of gunshots from his little drooling mouth
Sometimes with a suckling of complaint for the weaning dream
Sometimes with a crying curse against the real gunshots!
Damn you God! It’s so surreal
And, this is how we grew up with different names
With bizarre accreditations
In different leikai's under the cloud of suspicion
Entrenched from the decades of struggle!

But we dreamed on dream and dream and dream.

In these decades, we have lost our sanity
Oh, I wish I have had a gun, in the name of the freedom
So that I can die in the womb itself.
At least, I will have a name attached with the gun
But unluckily, there ain't any gun I can be proud of holding
Nor for my parents while I was still a lump of blood.

And, everybody is happy devising new forms of protest!

Do I need to remind,
Bullet respects bullet!
So help me make bullets of paper
And the gun, oh my dear!
There is no dream without gun
There is no dream without gun
There is no school without gun
There is no body without gun
There is no grave without gun
And the paper bullets
Our best friend!