Social Media: The Third Eye Poem by Namita Rani Panda

Knowledge and power
No more the monopoly of the stronger
Social media like the rays of the sun
Reaches the lands unexplored and unknown
Maybe he is Donald Trump or Dana Majhi
His story of success or sufferings is on headlines
Maybe she is Nirvaya or Aung San Suu Kyi
Public raise voice to ensure justice and safety
Media covers titbit of every occasion in every season
As the sun shines on blue oceans as well as the dirty drains
With no discrimination
Between a pauper and a powerful politician
It ensures unprecedented public participation
No exclusion or segregation
For geographic locations
Influences unchallengeable public opinion
Democracy deepened
For the unmediated communication
And awareness travels faster than light
Be it a calamity or pandemic like Covid-19
People fight with indomitable grit
Well informed are the global citizens
Millions united in a second to suggest countless solutions
To the most difficult situations
To make planet earth a heavenly haven
The planet has shrunk to a global village
Freedom of expression is everyone's privilege
"Vasudheiba Kutumbakam" is no more a mirage
Generosity and sympathy reach like cool shower
From afar, from every corner
Maybe there is flood in Assam,
Earth quack in Japan or war in Afghanistan
Media is there to dispel darkness
And spread light to harness happiness.


Foot Notes:
Dana Majhi: A helpless tribal man from Odisha who walked for ten kilometres carrying his wife's dead body on his shoulders because he could not pay to transport it.

Nirvaya: Nirvaya means fearless, the name widely used by media for the victim of gang rape in Delhi in 2012 as Indian law does not allow the press to publish a rape victim's name. Her struggle and death became a symbol of women's resistance to rape around the world.

Vasudheiba Kutumbakam: A Sanskrit phrase that means that the whole world is one single family