ARE WE NOT BR-OTHERS?

BENOY P.J

So the thread leads you hither

So the twine leads you thither

“Put a ban on the other!

Put a ban on all movement

So that peace shall be with us!”

They do cry out from hill tops

Threatened no little

By that which is not them.

The sea was so dense

That a canoe couldn’t cross it

The roads were so pure

That a shadow may not cut it

The temple sat supreme with a

Sneer on its face.

Distance its norm

And slow contempt its form.

The other is no swine

For you to so whine

With no axe can you annex

My  rights to this land

Pathetic segregating soul!

Sameness, the blind horse

Whose nose flares up

At all those who smell a bit different,

Vicious sant of the walloping kind!

People congregated on the sea waves

A cart -wheel cut through the dirt road

The news went around

That a dawn was so near.

Schools opened their gates

To blow out the stale air

And let in the new thought.

Then came nationalism

The temple in its midst

The call again for the select

People were conjoined

But the fault lines were clear,

Some where there who did not belong

People of  faiths different,

People who were not charmed by the

Call of the temple bells.

Things evolved,

The nation was born

But that was no end.

Come the present,

Tyrants rant from the flanks

That the nation has gone to dogs.

The question keeps cropping up

Is there mysticism in murder?

Is there religion in arson

And spirituality in rape?

The toilers sleep is deep,

But the schemers

While they turn around

In  their nightmares

Never realize that

They are the nightmare

Of our times.

You have won over many,

You may still win

But time will seize that crown

And throw it down in disgust

And send your memories

To  the very dungeons

Where you have sent

So many free spirits to dwell.

Smearing your forehead with sandal

Will not hide the depravity

The thread of  contempt

For common people

Will come out in the open

They will know that

The moral platitudes

Devised to cover up hatred

Will soon evaporate if you were to gain power.

Do you want war

With your neighbours?

Are  we to crave for

The death of all those who wouldn’t fit in?

Is difference a crime?

If so, are you not also a criminal?

With what empty slogan

Can you efface the other?

Where do you stop and the other begin?

What is it in your self

That feels threatened by them?

The way that you have defined yourself-

The things that you are not,

And the things that you are-

Are they also not transitory

With you all the time becoming

Someone else

That you were not?

I have no answers

But a good many questions-

Countries that had gone

To ruthless wars between them

Have sat down to dine

And shared their currency.

What is there that time cannot put behind?

Why are we still insecure

With that we are not ?

The self is a chimera

Even more than the other

If its boundaries were to be so well kept

How can one travel?

Even if

You travel between one and the other,

Always failing to reach there.