While razing the house of a Muslim family
and setting them on fire with kerosene
the man was thinking of the Buddhist monastery
he planned to visit in Bhutan.
It was his long drawn wish to meditate
on the mountains where the air was thin.
Meanwhile the wails of the hapless family
floated back to his ears and he grew
furious at his reveries being disturbed.
He started kicking the bodies before him
trying hard to silence even the whimpers.
When their cries had ceased and the
house was fully razed, he returned to his
pious thoughts about offering a chadar
at the Ajmer Darga and lighting candles
at the altar of the Velankanni Church.
By then a few adolescent lads had started
raising the prayer cries of Allahu Akbar.
Raising his baton and crying Har har Mahadev
he rushed to their midst, bashing a few skulls.
A stone was flung at him and he raised his pistol
and fired into the crowd with an Om on his lips.
Rash is a poet from Kerala
