Daily Times

I wait for that phone call from across the meshed wires,

that hang like broken bones on the body of charred borders.

With his sugar-laced urdu, the dove greets me salam,

He wishes me on Diwali, and sings the birthday song from distances forlorn.

In our censored citadels,

We conspire to commit peace,

to wage a war with words of mutual love and solidarities.

We tirelessly talk of brainwashing young minds,

One letter at a time, one postcard in a pile.

These scandalous postcards are ripped and scrutinised.

Do they contain distorted maps, passcodes, secret passageways to enter the guarded mansions of hatred?

These letters are grand schemes exchanged in crayoned pockets.

These letters resolve to remove the stains of blood, gore, trauma,

With an acidic recipe of two spoons of love, 5 tablespoons of peace,

Tempered with a bollywood track and a cricket match.

Oh these young, dim witted uniform clad souls! Don’t they know?

The debris of their dreams have been slit open.

Their dancing dove was trapped in a darkened cell and broken.

They call him a statistic

200th case of ‘enforced disappearance’,

No letters have since then escaped the silent stones of doom,

The bones crumble and crack, and sing the symphony of gloom.

Published in Daily Times, April 4^th 2018.