Dear Dad,
I am glad you did not live to see these.
You died.
Died before you saw
them collapse by the roadside.
Gandhi called them his friend.
And so did you.
Why did God not have mercy on them?
Why is it they have no food?
No water, no shoes?
Why is it they have no home
in the place they work to call their own?
Why did they not have a home and food?
Why were there no labour laws to fulfill their basic needs —
Food, Potable Water, Home and School?
Safety rules?
Why is it that Only Now, shame and guilt bows our heads?
And yet, yet no one asked,
asked before the Exodus,
why they have no homes – no questions asked for more than half a century —
till the death layer of the sun threatened to silence all Mankind?
Are they not Human? Not a part of Mankind?
Why is it we point fingers but cannot take a stand?
Why is it we never asked while they laboured on our land,
Who will give them shelter? A future for their children —
Now swallowed by the virulence of the virus,
Or, is it Starvation’s hungry mouth?
Or was it Exhaustion? Lack of Water? Dehydration?
Dad,
I am glad you are dead.
Or, your heart would have bled
Till you died.
It is a mercy you are spared this sight.
— With love from your daughter
Mitali Chakravarty is a writer and the founding editor of borderlessjournal.com
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