BJP will secure majority in Karnataka: Tejasvi Surya

New Delhi, Jun 5: Congress has named Mallikarjun Kharge as its candidate for ensuing biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka.

Party interim president Sonia Gandhi approved Kharge's candidature on Friday, according to a Congress release by general secretary Mukul Wasnik.

The elections to fill the pending 18 Rajya Sabha seats from seven states will be held on June 19.

Udupi, May 31: As many as 10 people have been tested positive for coronavirus in Udupi district today. 

The district has registered a total of 187 positive cases so far. Majority of the positive cases in Udupi district have inter-state travel history to Maharashtra.

Meanwhile, 14 people including three children who recovered from COVID -19 discharged from Government Hospital in Kundapura, in Udupi district.

Kundapura AC Raju, DHO Dr Sudhirchandra Sooda, taluk medical officer Dr Nagabhushan Udupa handed over a rose to all the discharged. With this, a total of 64 persons have been recovered and discharged in the district.

We came on foot, we came on boats, shouting slogans of Azadi.

We stood on roof tops and sat on walls under the burning midday sun,

Listening to the words that we had longed to hear for so long.

Words that had been scripted through the lonely fears of our hearts.

Words that were spoken now with the clarity of courage.

Words that were spoken now with the suppressed strength of pent up anger.

Words that were spoken now with the certainty of belonging to the soil 

Which had become one with the dust of our ancestors.

We stood there in the waves of heat

Feeling the surge and press  of countless bodies around us.

Bodies meshed through the odour of sweat 

And the shared fear of a common persecution.

And hanging from the roof tops,

And tied to the poles,

And clutched in hands slippery with sweat,

And wrapped round the pillars,

And spreading into our blood,

Were three strips of colour with a wheel of spokes,

Sewn together into the shape of our being.

Woven into the folds of our future and the creases of our past. 

Stitched to the seams of the earth, the water, the air and the sky 

That belonged to us and to which we belonged. 

And we stood there from noon to evening,

We the people of India.

Raising our clenched fists like signposts to the future.

Chanting slogans like a new anthem.

Kin to each other through the ties of community.

Born to live and die 

In a nation that was ours to hold on to

And ours to belong to.

Dr Parinitha is a professor of English in Mangalore University. She penned the poem soon after participating in the historic protest against CAA, NPR and NRC at Shah Garden, Adyar, Mangaluru on 15th January, 2020.

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