Another Leaf
Another Leaf
(Father Stanislaus Lourduswami 1937 - 2021)
He walked, sang, drank and danced with the adivasis, drawing from the Tree of Life.
In the dappled shades of the forest he witnessed life and love.
A leaf on a tree he swayed, fluttered and braced against wind and rain, thunder and lightning.
As a leaf he saw, leaves stripped off branches and branches torn off trees, trees uprooted.
The storms never as cruel as the unrelenting and extractive greed of mendacious policies to sap away the adivasi way of life.
Dismembered, depleted dispossessed, with the adivasis, battered and bruised, he learned to stand, to take a stand, a defender of adivasi rights.
Like a leaf, battered by wind and rain, natural or state devised, he held on, drawing on the tenacity imbibed from generations of dispossessed adivasis.
‘Waiting for bail’, not Stan Swamy … for one willing in life and death, confident, as a fallen leaf, his life too would renew with the Tree of Life.
Labels: #adivasi, #adivasirights, #elgarparishad, #jesuitpriest, #jharkhand, #maoist, #nia, #stanswamy, #talojaprison, #tribalrights, #tribalrightsactivist, #uapa
posted by aquarian at 2:31 AM
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