Delhi, sobs of a Muslim child

The writers are freelance journalists. They can be<br /> <br /> contacted at [e-mail]

Delhi has seen some of the most tragic and harrowing incidents where Muslims were targeted by an RSS-orchestrated pogrom.

As reports of anti-Muslim atrocities pour through social media, the world has come to know about the carnage. Burnt properties, desecrated mosques and mutilated bodies discovered from drains and gutters have become a stark reminder to the world’s conscience that the neo-Nazi agenda of the MAD (Modi-Amit-Doval) circus is a blot on the face of India.

The trauma suffered by young the children of the Muslim community will keep haunting them for the rest of their lives. To express the pain and fear of Muslim children, an ode reflecting their anguish has been written to become a testament to the dark chapter in Indian polity, with the hope that some people with a conscience will read it and try stopping the insanity of the MAD circus.

This poem is an inspired version of our two poems on Gazan, Kashmiri and Syrian children, published in a mainstream newspaper on November 2012 and March 2018, respectively.

 

Delhi, sobs of a Muslim kid

Lynch mobs shouting Jai Shri Ram

And Doval advising me to stay calm

Ruined, devoured, ravaged and battered

My life is totally shattered

 

As the police trucks rumble pass my gutted home

And I glance over the burnt mosque’s dome

The skyline devoid of birds and painted in monochrome

Whispers, choked throats and hushed tones

 

Screams, sirens and blood brine

Like blackness in the depth of a coal mine

The country side has become a large guillotine

 

Greetings from the hell hole of Khajuri Khas

To Tehran, Dubai, Moscow, Riyadh and Kansas

Of dead bodies and carcass

Seelampur’s bloo- stained canvas

Shameless death of humanity’s colossus

 

We have called for help to the deaf ears of the Ummah

A dead beast good for nothing

With pigmy leaders always bluffing

Carcasses of decaying bodies of a billion plus

Feet of clay with virtually no truss

We have become nameless and non-existent

Thanks for your non-support

It has been so persistent

 

Jafrabad has a dusty wild mosaic

With systems gone archaic

Of burnt streets and shacks

Like a town of smokestacks

 

Fathers carrying slain bodies of kids in hides

And kids burying their parents, besides

Atomised neighbourhoods, clans and divides

We have become ‘Posters’ for warring sides

 

Dogs gnawing at the flesh of human bodies

The stench of blood in dark allies

Masked men passing through valleys

RSS traumatising us through rallies

And the media counting death tolls and tallies

 

Dead bodies tangled in the rubble and broken chairs

We hold daily funeral prayers

Ah, Maujpur has become a graveyard under the media’s glare

No more rainbows on our sky, my dear

No gaggling, no laughing, it’s a city in despair

 

Life has frozen in a dark tunnel of corpses and coffins

Of phosphorus smells and toxins

A city of human dust bins

A slaughterhouse of Muslims

 

You cannot bury the dead in time

Wait for intervals in the bombing rhyme

In daily routine of gun fire chime

The earth is soiled, filthy and begrime

 

And there are no seasons in Chandbagh, just burnt grass

No more chirping sounds of sparrows, alas

No bustle of market, no school, no class

Life is like walking daily on broken glass

 

No colours, no play, no hobbies

No memories left in the house of Zombies

Daily count of dead bodies

No meadows, gardens and green valleys

 

Grim destiny and the short span of smiles

Fetching water from ten miles

Our scary lifestyles

Heaps of boulders and trash piles

 

I am hushed and scared

Uncertainty stalks the neighbourhood, left uncared

Dark shadows of snipers on roof tops, prepared

The shrieks of someone slaughtered or snared

Or hurled down from a five story block, score squared

Here humanity is impaired

 

The sparrows of Gokulpuri are no more

My young brother lying bare on the bloodstained floor

I peep through the front yard’s broken door

 

For there is nothing left but a twisted baby cot

As I clean my brother’s blood clot

And look up to God in distressed fraught

I see the angels descending for the final escort

 

His bruised legs are getting cold

And the blood oozing out uncontrolled

My tears cross the threshold

His hushed hiccups becoming breathless, behold

 

 

The writers are freelance journalists. They can be contacted at [e-mail]