{"id":147368,"date":"2019-12-02T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T12:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=147368"},"modified":"2019-11-19T10:45:41","modified_gmt":"2019-11-19T10:45:41","slug":"house-of-gods-or-plea-for-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/12\/house-of-gods-or-plea-for-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"House of Gods or Plea for Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/justice-peace-768x397-scale-balan\u00e7a-paz-justi\u00e7a.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-147369\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/justice-peace-768x397-scale-balan\u00e7a-paz-justi\u00e7a-300x155.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"155\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/justice-peace-768x397-scale-balan\u00e7a-paz-justi\u00e7a-300x155.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/justice-peace-768x397-scale-balan\u00e7a-paz-justi\u00e7a.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Oh house of Gods! Oh house of Gods!<br \/>\nTemples or Mosques<br \/>\nChurches or Synagogues<br \/>\nDisplaced they stand\u2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">A black stone<br \/>\nRectangle or phallic<br \/>\nDoes it matter?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">In streams refugees pour out<br \/>\nBloodshed, Gore<br \/>\nHatred and More<br \/>\nMore and More<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Ring- a- round the roses<br \/>\nPocketful of doses<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">You think when they Burnt,<br \/>\nSinged, they would have learnt<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Flames should be doused<br \/>\nNot aroused<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Ram and Rahim<br \/>\nMerciful Guanyin<br \/>\nImages that flit<br \/>\nAnd then fade<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Blinded, Justice opens its gate \u2014<br \/>\nAnger followed by hate<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Will there be violence?<br \/>\nWill there be clash?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Ram and Rahim?<br \/>\nDid they just decree that?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Ram Rahim Guanyin<br \/>\nRahim Ram Guanyin<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Corpses float in a river of bloody angst\u2014 is it Ram or Rahim?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Om shantih! Om shantih! Om shantih!<\/p>\n<p><em>10 Nov 2019<\/em><\/p>\n<p>__________________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><em>Mitali Chakravarty\u2019s poetry has been published online and as part of two anthologies, <\/em>In Reverie<em> (2016) and <\/em>An Anthology of Indian Poetry in English<em> (1984). She has published a humorous book of essays on living in China where she spent eight years, <\/em>In the Land of Dragons<em> (2014); translated a short story, \u2018<\/em>Full Circle<em>\u2019, by the erstwhile Nabendu Ghosh, a Bengali writer and Bollywood scriptwriter, which was published in a collection called <\/em>That Bird Called Happiness<em> (2018). She had numerous bylines in <\/em>The Times of India, The Hindustan Times <em>and<\/em> The Statesman<em> in the 1980s up to 1992 and more recently online on <\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/Kitaab.org\" >Kitaab.org<\/a><em>, <\/em>Countercurrents, Modern Literature <em>and<\/em> The Daily Star<em> (Bangladesh). This April, she joined <\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/kitaab.org\/\" >kitaab.org<\/a><em> as the editor. She blogs at <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/432m.wordpress.com\/\" >432m.wordpress.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/countercurrents.org\/2019\/11\/house-of-gods-or-plea-for-peace\" >Go to Original \u2013 countercurrents.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh house of Gods! Oh house of Gods!<br \/>\nTemples or Mosques<br \/>\nChurches or Synagogues<br \/>\nDisplaced they stand\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":147369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[119,868,107],"class_list":["post-147368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-peace","tag-poetry","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}