JUST FIVE METERS: AN URBAN APPEAL By Shelly Jyoti
SPOKEN WORD POETRY
DIGITAL TRACK: App 00:05:51 minutes
RECORDING: Studio Pindrop, Haus khas, New Delhi
143 lines
An excerpt from ‘Magic Lantern series’ (2016)-Spoken word poetry
I began to write this poem when I visited Dandi in July 2013 during my personal Dandi March to taste the’ Salt movement’ started by Gandhi in 1934. Meeting veteran freedom fighters like Acharya Dhirubhai and Gosai Bhai Patel and listening to their stories of participation in freedom struggle and also un-fulfilled dreams of independent India, inspired as well as left a vacuum in me. The thoughts like, perhaps the villages could have performed better with Gandhi’s idea of swaraj and autonomy.
Seven decades of independence and the poor infrastructure in rural societies with no light, no education and no basic amenities, kept finding a resolve in my mind. The idea of’ swadharma’ became meaningful and larger to me as how effortlessly we can support the hand spinning and weaving cottage industry or the village civilization by thirty crore urban population who have economically grown with machinery and industrialization.
Gandhi was a problem solver, pragmatic and charismatic leader of the Indian national movement. He was inspired by the vision of swaraj (self government), which for him meant not just freedom from colonial rule but the achievement of self-reliance and self-respect by the villagers who make up the most of India’s population. His economics was a part of his vision