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We belong to the third world.
Disunited, disintegrated, disinherited;
engaged in making the first world
richer, stronger, with our brain and brawn.
When we fight against them
we are all over the place. Anger, hatred,
abuses misdirect us and we remain their
slaves forever and ever.
Dickens, Hitler, Eliot, Churchill
they are all guilty of genocide,
either in words, or, in actions.
Now does this mean that we break
their statues, or instead, build our
own image, by organizing ourselves
to salvage the character, and dignity
we lost for centuries?
It is futile to look for a person belonging
to the first world, renowned or otherwise,
who isn’t a racist; anyone who needs to be
accepted in the first world, has to play this
inevitable card, VS Naipaul is immensely
popular in the first world because of his
ability to speak in the same language!
ECRI might try as much as it can; nothing
will change unless the people of the
third world change.
The poem urges you to read the lines of Maya
Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Ralph Ellison, Langston
Hughes, and many others, including the more
recent Adam Roy Goodes, all of whom have
said, that anger and hatred, killing and violence
will make us what we don’t want to become.
We abandoned our paradise for the sake
of a foreign garden. Whatever be our history,
we have deserved every bit of it. Let us
rewrite it with determination and love,
not with conceit, revenge, and blame.
Dickens and Eliot will continue to win the
hearts of readers from all over the world,
like this poem, might just be dear to those
reading from the 'right' side of the table.
We have a humongous task before us if we
want to change our fate, our history. For
this, we need to go back to our own
lands. True, we were brought in the first
world, earlier as slaves, later we deserted
our lands for want of a better life.
Instead of digging the paths of the cruel past,
which is full of snatching, cheating, gang
killing, robbing, it is time we change our destiny,
the poem urges the real brains of the third world
to make our continents teeming with equal
comforts, amenities, luxuries, and opulence.
Indolence and ignorance will not help; innocence,
belief, hard work surely will.
The poem imagines a small advertisement
from the beautiful countries of the third world
that would find a place in their dailies, fifty years
from now:
‘Inviting immigrants in all the affluent countries
Of Africa and Asia. It is now exclusively open for
Americans, and Europeans. Australians, and
New Zealanders, watch this space for further
Advertisements. Everyone will be treated equally,
With dignity. We accept that we need your
Services and expertise to enrich our soil, we also
Do know that you want a better life! So let us make
It a win-win situation. We assure you that you
Will be treated equally, not merely as whites.’