In this land of the dead
You are the only one who is alive my child
Don’t look askance at these faces with those horror stricken eyes
For how will they answer you, they are nothing but corpses themselves
They died the day they traded your pain with their own false insecurities
They died the day they killed the God inside them to keep religion alive
They died the day they looked at you and saw not a child but a pawn to be used in their dirty games
They died the day when they shed those tears and raised those voices out loud….not to mourn the death of humanity but the indictment of those they thought were their own
They died the day they chose hatred and death over love and life
They died the day chose to hide behind their gods in defense of their murder of humanity
They died the day they searched the faces of their children and could not find you there
They died the day they walked their most dishonorable walk and chose to wear it as a badge of honor
And when they died, they didn’t do it alone
They killed all of us for they held us witness to their acts
They tied our tongues and dared us to speak
They trampled on our consciences and challenged us to weep
They teased us and taunted us and badgered us with their unrelenting questions
What will you do now? What did you do till now? What can you do? Come on! Answer us!
And we struggled and struggled and struggled and struggled unable to find our voice in the face of their vicious laughs
For we had already mourned the death of humanity with the customary two-minute silence
And it was too huge a risk to openly distance ourselves from the powers that be
To stop them in their deadly and shameful march, to shout out loud that this will not be allowed to be
For no religion can thrive on the dead body of a child
And the worst disgrace a national flag can suffer is to be waved proudly by the apologists of the rapists and murderers of a beautiful and promising life
So here on this land where some have died and some have been killed and no one is now alive, whom do you look for? What do you crave?
The answers to your unasked questions, child, are dug up in this mass of unending graves
Nivedita Dwivedi has done MA in Elementary Education from Tata Institute of Social Science. Blog at http://fromwordstovoid.blogspot.in
