‘What happened to the flowers?’: What absolute freedom looks like for publisher-poet Naveen Kishore

They tried him. Without a trial. Accusing him of things he had not done. Pronouncing guilt. Sentencing. As punishment. They tied him up. Wrapping a rope around him from head to toe. Arms parallel to his body. His wings tightly clenched fists. Bound to his arms. As he stood. Proud and tall. Shot him with a water cannon at 40 degrees below zero. Frozen thus. They lowered him from the trapdoor in the sky. And cut the rope.

The angel expelled.

I

The forcible nature of the “Un belong”; how nations enforce a violent “unbelonging” upon their people – I use “people” and not “minority” because even though it begins with first stripping the minority populations within nation states of their self-esteem using policing methods that include a combination of constant surveillance and violence and detention and imprisonment without recourse to law, this “enforcement” spreads to take in as much of the populace as possible. No longer just supplicants but dehumanised surviving entities who spend their entire “living-lives” attempting to survive. Forget notions of who belongs and who doesn’t; who has rights to being a citizen and who doesn’t; note the fact that the law no longer stands as a counter-force against this enforcement. On...

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