What happened in the world on this day in the year you were born? That was what we were tasked with finding out this week, a rather overwhelming prompt, as I have been told. Even I could not narrow it down in time but did find many possible future stories (to add to my teetering stack of possible future stories).
This week we have two very interesting tales from different points of time and space by Kelli J. Gavin and Sunil Sharma. Reading these two stories connects us to the past while reminding us that some stories never change, simply change characters. Please enjoy some time traveling and be sure to come back again on Monday for our next round of writing and reading.
Cries For Freedom
Kelli J Gavin
Cries for freedom are only sometimes heard
Mostly ignored and trampled on
Turning the Bantu’s into slaves
An easy choice for early traders
Traded as slaves for centuries
The Bantu people continued their cries
Cries for freedom are only sometimes heard
Mostly ignored and trampled on
Ruled by countries they would never see
Fearful of losing all they had ever known
Speaking a language not their own
Their cries never ceased
Cries for freedom are only sometimes heard
Mostly ignored and trampled on
The Liberation Front fought long and hard
Independence gained not a moment too soon
Mondlane and Machel had a vision
Of a country ruled by its people
Cries for FREEDOM are only sometimes heard
Mozambique no longer ignored and trampled on
June 25, 1975
Bio-
Kelli J Gavin lives in Carver, Minnesota with Josh, her husband of an obscene amount of years and they have two crazy kids. She is a Writer, Professional Organizer and owns Home & Life Organization and a small Jewelry Company. Look for Kelli’s first book of short stories and poems in 2019. You can find her work with The Ugly Writers, Sweatpants & Coffee, Writing In a Woman’s Voice, The Writers Newsletter, Writers Unite!, Academy of the Heart and Mind, The Rye Whiskey Review, Spillwords, Mercurial Stories, 121 Words, HerStry, Ariel Chart, The Basil O’Flaherty, PPP Ezine, Southwest Media, Otherwise Engaged, Pleather Skin, Paper.Li, The New Ink Review, among others.
Find Kelli on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @KelliJGavin
Blog found at kellijgavin@blogspot.com
Lessons
Sunil Sharma
He wanted to be part of history—before becoming history.
But history is not kind: It favours only few individuals and hates the masses—the first lesson delivered by his high-school teacher that resonated so well.
Initially, he had felt cheated. Father had always insisted that it was possible to rise up in society—even for a lower-middle-class, small-town, ordinary guy, in a vibrant democracy!
Soon, he realized, he was bypassed. Grim realities caught on —lost father; dropped out; became a sales-person in a shoe shop to support a large family.
Hardly 19 at that time!
Life—raw, prosaic and brutal! Dreams belonged to another age and class.
The man who wanted to be the king became pauper, instead.
He wrote in the diary.
Selling shoes to customers was a daily challenge. Surviving on a meager salary was another existential battle.
Democracy and its promise of deliverance—a plain lie!
An epiphany recorded as a diary-entry.
.
When he turned 25 on March 25, 2018— a marginal man and doomed to be that only—somebody suggested the second best option of entering the annals—by checking the famous people or events, on that date.
Cool!
If not a general or emperor, he could bask in the reflected glory of the great.
Inder Kumar was curious to know what happened on his birthday.
After going through many such sites on his smart phone, Inder Kumar, a lean man with a perpetual hungry look, embarked on a journey backwards in time and found few incidents as most exciting, on that hot Sunday afternoon, propped up against the stacks of shoes, re-visiting memorable incidents.
.
Here, the selection:
—1199
King Richard, the Lion Heart, killed.
.
—1965
The Third Selma to Montgomery March.
.
—1811
PB Shelley rusticated from the Oxford for his easy on atheism!
.
—1957
“Howl” by Ginsberg banned!
.
—1911
The fire in Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, New York, kills 146.
.
They met in the late night.
—What did you fish out from the dustbin of history? Asked his friend Raju.
—Some fascinating facts. Said Inder.
—What kind of facts? Asked Raju.
—Random things. Made few internal connections between these occurrences separated by time and space, yet linked together, in an odd way.
—Tell me these discoveries made by a bright man, denied his greatness.
Raju did not sound sarcastic.
Inder recited the list of items culled from the belly of the past and offered his observations: That a king could be killed by a boy who is a commoner. People power can shake the well-entrenched system through a long march. Oxford and courts can ban writers on stupid reasons and continue to treat thinkers, as threats. That the poorly-paid workers can die in an inferno in an advanced democracy. Considered garbage by the capital! Yet, these disenfranchised guys made history in a modest way!
—Hmm!
—Alternative reading of events only!
——————————–
Sunil Sharma is Mumbai-based senior academic, critic, literary editor and author with 19 published books: Six collections of poetry; two of short fiction; one novel; a critical study of the novel, and, eight joint anthologies on prose, poetry and criticism, and, one joint poetry collection. He is a recipient of the UK-based Destiny Poets’ inaugural Poet of the Year award—2012. His poems were published in the prestigious UN project: Happiness: The Delight-Tree: An Anthology of Contemporary International Poetry, in the year 2015.
Sunil edits the English section of the monthly bilingual journal Setu published from Pittsburgh, USA:
http://www.setumag.com/p/setu-home.html
For more details, please visit the blog:
http://www.drsunilsharma.blogspot.in/
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