Vintage Partition Photographs Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Black and white photographs
I see them
To understand it
Rather than going by any text
The historian puts it before
As the history
Of modern age
Beginning with independence,
Heralding a new age.

I see the bullock cart,
The horse-carriage
With the horses nonplussed to go,
Take to the partition people
With belongings,
Houses abandoned
With the cattle left out,
The old and the infirm on the ways,
A mammoth of people taking to roads,
Going where?

The caravans of refugees,
People in simple dhoti, kurta and sari,
The common folks on the pathways
Going to an unknown destination
So far from,
The trains crowded with
With a great rush
Sitting atop the trains,
Hanging onto gates.

I do not know
Who took it
Who from whose cameras,
Who clicked
And snapped photos
And whose photos
Display we
In art galleries
Or keep we in museums
To have a re-look on them?