by Sekhar Banerjee
we watched Mr. Bean
but could not laugh out loud—
there was a tax beyond 60 decibels.
My elder brother planted a horse-chestnut tree
and named it My Experiment with Untruth.
It caught fire and withered without ash;
the agencies raided our house
and confiscated his pen drive
with Love and Other Drugs.
For three consecutive days that summer,
we received blank newspapers.
There was even a power cut
when the trees were blooming.
We had black frangipani flowers
and empty newspaper columns—
like multi-storeyed buildings without tenants.
The tube-light party blamed the laptop party.
We were clueless and secretly watched
Bridgerton and Breaking Bad on television.
In the middle of summer,
the fire brigade authorities
imported additional crane lifts
to spray colours on white clouds
because they were too drab.
There was a candlelight, clandestine protest march
on social media at midnight.
Throughout the elongated summer days,
my parents were busy
discovering new angles and corners in the house
for their thrice-a-week bedtime profile pictures,
while my grandma endured
her strange ailment of the heart.
It opened and closed
like a thirsty, gasping sunflower.
My elder brother christened it
The Republic and Other Funny Stories.
She died the next day,
a mischievous smile on her dry lips.
Sekhar Banerjee: The poem intends to highlight how democratic structures can decay into dystopian absurdity, with partisan political power reducing civic engagement, curtailing free speech, and turning personal liberty into mere illusions. The poem depicts a society where everyday actions carry unintended political and financial consequences. The “tax beyond 60 decibels” turns laughter into a regulated act, symbolising how democratic governments levy charges on every conceivable thing under the sun. The elder brother’s tree withers away, suggesting that truth itself cannot survive in a partisan democracy. The confiscation of his pen-drive—containing Love and Other Drugs—points to excessive state surveillance and the policing of individual choices.
A key indicator of democratic backsliding in the poem is the absence of accurate information. Blank newspapers illustrate the control of the press by party funding, where truth is replaced by funded narratives. In the middle of this, people helplessly search out equally funny counter-narratives to resist whatever the system proposes to suppress—watching Breaking Bad and Bridgerton in secret, indicating the need for underground narratives that counter official and partisan propaganda. Meanwhile, authorities artificially spray colours on clouds, a metaphor for the state’s attempt to manufacture optimism in a grim reality.
The poem’s most important metaphor is the grandmother’s failing heart, called The Republic and Other Funny Stories. Her heart, which “opens and closes like a thirsty, gasping sunflower,” mirrors the unstable condition of democracy. Her mischievous smile in death suggests an awareness, like that of any elderly citizen, of the irony of it all—perhaps a quiet acknowledgment of how democracy, in its current avatar, gets usurped and becomes a tragicomedy.
In essence, “Summer of ’24” warns against the slow, almost unnoticed decay of democracy. It suggests that when governance becomes performative, press freedom is cosmetic, and citizens are reduced to passive spectators, democracy survives in name only—while its spirit is quietly extinguished.
Published: Wednesday 12 March 2025[RETURN TO WRITE TO POWER]
Sekhar Banerjee‘s poetry collections include The Fern Gatherer’s Association (Red River, 2021) and Probably Geranium (Red River, 2024). His works have appeared in various international and national anthologies, journals, and magazines, such as Stand Magazine, Berkeley Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Indian Literature, Arkana, The Lake, The Bitter Oleander, Thimble, Voice & Verse, The Bangalore Review, The Wire, Outlook, and elsewhere. His poems have also featured in the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English. He received the Arkana Editor’s Choice Award in 2023 from the University of Central Arkansas. He considers poetry a deeply meditative practice and an organic way of living—the only way to interpret the world as he perceives it. He hails from Jalpaiguri, an old tea town in sub-Himalayan West Bengal, India, and lives in Kolkata.
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