“Be like water” ~Bruce Lee

Under strict police crackdown of peaceful protests around the country, to express our disagreement with discriminatory legislation, the people of India began to self-organize pop-up flash protests, in which we flow like water, resilient, impossible to grasp, yet indomitable and life-affirming.

Be like smoke.
Blow.
Blow into eyes and make them tear;
Disappear and reappear: an apparition and an aberration.
Blow into nostrils, fill up lungs;
Expand and contract: be immeasurable and uncontainable.
Get up in signals of impending threat. Be like fire.

Glow.
Glow as a passion that ignites the heart;
Be wild, uncontrollable, all-consuming.
Glow like a white-hot flame to forge an iron spine;
Be a bright and blinding flash of truth,
Sear, burn to ashes forces that spread fear.

Be like sand.
Grow.
Grow faith that takes root in the mind;
Be adaptable, malleable, unpredictable.
Grow castles fragile underfoot;
Disperse and reassemble: a shape-shifting avatar,
Slide, swallow and bury secrets deep inside.

Be like water.
Flow.
Flow out of grasp of callous palms;
Trickle down: devoted, resilient, persistent.
Flow as relief into long-parched lips;
Shower down: gushing, splashing, torrential,
Rise up in waves of truth to drown out lies.

Be like smoke.
Be like fire.
Be like sand.
Be like water.

Alone, you are none. Together, you are one.