Your idea of heaven
Is my idea of hell!
How will we ever reconcile?
You talk of supremacy
I walk with the oppressed
How do we find a middle ground?
You use brute loud force
I sing my songs of protest
Do you ever hear me?
You think might is right
I believe meek too has a right
How do I protect my child?
You are drunk on power
I root for my freedom
How do we avoid the fight?
Dice is definitely loaded
You will win this fight
But still you will lose
You will remember me
At the door of heaven
Your sins
Will be my testimony
Your lies
My truth
The fire you lit to hide your crimes
Will burn down the heaven
Your supremacy is a sham
You have power that is not yours
One day humanity will rise
One day humanity has to rise!
Tag: freedom
Lost Humanity
Scavenging under the rubbles
She looked for humanity
It was yet another day of
Strategic bombing
They tried to flee in vain
From guns and grenades
And bombs
And landmines
And beastly men
Death was everywhere
In every form
It caught up with all
Even those who escaped these
Troubled shores
She kept scavenging for humanity
Under the rubbles
Of the wasteland
Many died
For the sake of few
Who wanted to live
It was a lost battle
Under the rubbles
She scavenged
For dead humanity
The Blue Door
There is a blue door at end of the road. People say it’s the door to the happiness. One can hear laughter and songs, but no one is ever seen crossing the threshold. Neighborhood believes that all the peace and happiness has got locked behind the blue door. No one knows who has locked all the joy away but the sadness and anger that is left behind is quite palpable.
As one walks down the road, one can hear screams of the locked lunatic sibling coming from an attic of one house. They say he lost his mind over a girl who was forced to marry someone from her clan. From another house one can hear heart rending lament of a mother whose only child has gone missing. A misogynist cop rants and screams in the other one, ordering his wife and children who tremble with fear. A young girl screams hysterically in the next one whenever she hears a footstep, “They are coming for me. Save me.”
The town has a church, a temple, synagogue and a mosque where prayers are held daily. Everyone prays for peace and prosperity that they think is locked elsewhere behind the Blue door. They all hold each other’s faith in doubt. They all live in constant fear and pride of their gods. They fight and attack each other relentlessly. It feels as though they are compelling their gods to compete in a race to gain the highest glory and power of the land (just like they wanted the children to compete once upon a time). Sadly, they have managed to drive both gods and children away.
After prayers everyone returns to the little hell they have managed to create. The Blue door remains shut forever. In their fight, hatred and bigotry, the town has forgotten that the gods have left key to the door with them – the key that opens only when there is love and kinship.
Bare Foot Joy

Making, flying and chasing paper kites
Bare foot
Running across the crowded streets
They seem to soar just like the kites
Kite runners look happy
Across continents their joy is same
For the moment
They are free just like their kites
Riding on the lightness of the moment
They behold pure joy
The joy that eludes
The boy across the street
Sitting in the car
Staring through the glass window
He is a prisoner of luxuries
While poverty has set others free
They run like wind
Through narrow lanes
They hop across building roof tops
While the other stays glued
To the smart phone screen
Sun kissed
Blessed by the evening breeze
Our kite runners seize the moment!
Ah! the bare foot joy
That eludes the little boy!
Seeking the Moon
I seek the moon tonight
With thousands of others
From my window
Caged momentarily tonight
In my cell window
Moon too looks desolate
And Persecuted
Was I persecuted for
Beholding the Moon?
My parents at my faraway home
Me, at my detention centre
Along thousands of refugees,
Illegal immigrants
And activists around the world
All are looking at the Moon
Moon smiles as ever grimly
Bonded forever to the Earth
Spinning with twined destiny
It tells me
We all need to wait
There is no easy way
To Salvation
And Freedom
Other
Peasants will rise
They will sing
They will protest
They will take bullet
They will save democracy
While we will fret
And intellectualize!
Educated middle classes
Don’t you worry
These whom you ‘other’
Will save your jobs too
They don’t need you
But you do
To reap crops,
Cook your food
Cobble your shoes
Tailor your clothes,
Build your homes
Clean your homes
Toilets and cars too!!
After the revolution
They will still come
And assume their lowly jobs
While you will rot in your guilt
Or die with a foolish smug!
History textbooks will talk of them
But you will be mentioned
As the ‘other’ who let the system down!!
#saynotohate
Staying Relevant
Staying relevant
In irrelevant times
Is the challenge
Engage
Or disengage?
Stay attached?
Or be detached?
When Time sweeps
You away from the frame
Should one linger
On the fringes?
Where does one go?
Is there a Rumi’s field?
The even playing field?
Where they play it fair
No time to call a foul
A foul
No ground rules
It’s a game
Where no one wins
But all try to
Reinvent
Shifting positions
Moving goal-posts
To stay relevant
In these irrelevant times…

The Day Freedom Was Won and Lost
They both stood vigil
Just like lovers
With surgical precision
Lines were drawn
And lives got thrown
Into disarray
One thought Nation did not belong to them
Other was too young and weak to claim or protect
The two great lovers
Stood and watched
As a Nation got ripped into two
And precious lives ebbed away
No one realised
It was the very idea of love and freedom
They had aborted that day
As the Nation bled
Along with lives
Homes
Identities
Peace
Love
Humanity
All was lost
And alleged lovers stood vigil
Arrogantly announcing
Their Nation’s tryst with destiny!!