THE POEM PM WROTE... 

As promised to an audience in London, Modi tweeted one of his Gujarati poems titled Ramata Ram Akela (I Am the Lonely Wanderer) against a blue background. Taru Meghanee Kajaria, a senior journalist and columnist, translated the poem into English for The Telegraph

This twilight hour and I, the lonely wanderer 
My entire being surging with exuberance of the Tarnetar * 
Neither owe to, nor claim from anyone, nothing mine or thine,
Whatever the world has, commonly shared by choice.
My path is simple and straight, no logjam, no pushing to and fro,
This twilight hour and I, the lonely wanderer.
Neither any sect nor cult, a human after all is human,
Does it make any difference to the light, be it a tiny earthen lamp or a lantern?
Never exhibited as those glittering chandeliers,
This twilight hour and I, the lonely wanderer.

*A popular fair named after a village in Gujarat’s Surendranagar district

...AND DID NOT WRITE

The following are excerpts from a poem written by Syed Sajjad Qadri, who lives in Srinagar, after an eight-year-old girl was raped and murdered in Jammu’s Kathua. The lines are being reproduced with his permission

They kept me captive for eight days
Against eight summers I ever lived
They drugged me and starved me out
So that I could not shout
Within the precincts of their holy place
They found solace in my sobs....My sedated eyes figured their shadows
While they crushed me under their weightThey clogged with their heavy hand
My mouth that tried to shout aloudI called my mom with my feeble whispers 
But they choked me with my head scarf....Even the stone behind the wall 
Pleaded for mercy and to let me off….
They washed my purple shirt
That had turned crimson
With the holy water
In the name of religion