An advertisement

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? 

May not be in black and white, but in our
minds we all have a racist in us, in some form
or the other. So, it is futile to look for a
non-racist in their land; anyone who needs
to be accepted in the first world has to play this
inevitable card, VS Naipaul is immensely
popular as an English author because of his
ability to speak in the same language!
ECRI might try as much as it can; nothing
will change unless the peoples 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.

It is pointless to ask for reparations or expect
atonement from those who don't know where
they went so horribly wrong. 
Instead of traveling the paths of the cruel past,
full of snatching, cheating, gang killing, robbing,
it is time we set forth for a new trajectory, to change
our destiny.

The poem invites the stalwarts of the third world
to empower our continents, so they teem with equal
comforts, amenities, luxuries, and opulence.
Indolence and ignorance will not help; innocence,
belief, intellect, 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
North Americans, and Europeans. Australians, and
New Zealanders, please watch this space for further
advertisements. Everyone will be treated with
dignity. 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.’