A country going down
To kill innocence of it own citizen
I ask
Why
They answer ‘to save India’

They shoot
The artery burst out
With blood decorating the ground
Warm and hot
It crawls like a snake
To his mother’s feet
I see
An absurdness engulfing my soul
I ask why
But who to answer
Who to save
Politicians say everything is fine
They shunned communication
They say its ok
We’ll change the situation
With the blood pouring down the street

I stand there
With a barrel of gun towards me
I inhale cigarette smoke
Pour down some whiskey
To thin my blood
So it finds its way to my mother’s feet
My salvation
From the caged world
Once I depart
They say I die a partisan
Of a devil
I laugh
With smoke filling up my future
They say I was anti-India
I say go f*** yourself

I walked down the aisle
With a stranger’s laugh waiting for me on other side
Its a strange laugh
Witty and devilish
He looks at me
Amidst the haze of a settling sun
With fire in his eyes
My hand tremble
With an unknown fear

As the haze settles down
I see him
Standing
With a smile on his face
He says ‘I am a ripper’
I am here to take your soul
I see backwards
Where my mother wail

She cries
‘WHY’
But no one comes
I say to the ripper
Wait,
I can’t go
I can’t leave her
Give me some more time

He waits
As I see my mother
Putting me in a coffin
With tears dripping through her eyes
She holds me tight
My brothers quarter me on their shoulders
Chanting ‘Azadi’
They walk down the Lal chowk
Where I play in my childhood
They stumble on a rock
Where I had scribed my first love’s name
Walking past the Nand bab’s grocery store
Finally reaching my new home
The graveyard
I was lost in my thoughts
When
He speaks
‘Its time’
My heart gets heavy
I see all the faces
Flashing in front of my eyes
He takes my hand in his hands
And there in a nanosecond
I vanish from the space,
The ground
And
From
This world
To an unknown place…
Free… Azad… I fly