Insignificant

There are men dying.

There are men dying.

There are men dying every day.

There are men dying every day for you.

There are men DYING every day for you.

Strikes a cord?

Nevermind, cliches never will.

There's a girl you see. 11 years old. She's standing before her Dad's dead body. Her Dad is wrapped around with the Indian tricolor. Tears meander out of her eyes and reach her cheeks when she decides to lift her right hand up and salute the brave officer her Dad was. Her hand shakes as she salutes and yells out her father's regiment's battle cry. Soldiers scream along with the little girl in unison, a total of 3 times, as if the war cry was a way of weeping for their dead leader. 

She knows!

The little girl knows how important she is.

And by 'how important', I mean 'how unimportant'.

We're not brains, flesh and bones. We're meat, ready to take bullets till nothing remains of us. 

How unimportant!

How insignificant!

How mere!

Just like fireflies in daylight, 

just like night shifts in small towns,

just like 'there are soldiers dying for you' has lost its meaning with repetition,

just like 'there are kids waiting for their Dads to come back home alive'

just like 'Kashmir's situation is sad'

just like 'I'm proud to wrap my country's flag around my dead body.'

Every tear dropped for a fallen hero has been puffed away into smoke in this land of 3 million Gods.

She knows of fabrics colored with saffron, white and green. She knows of olive green uniforms and the ranks they carry. 

Each time she holds them in her hands,

she feels like an infant placing her little hands on her mother's arm as if making herself aware,

of how protection is what she'll get and in turn shall be responsible for,

of how trust will always lead to lethal levels of submission,

of how with every touch she'd be taught of patriotism as a moral from a fairy tale she must believe in.

She's never been to battles.

She's never held a weapon.

She never killed.

She never took a bullet.

But she knows of combat.

She's not her Dad.

She's the one waiting behind. 

We've always been the ones waiting!

O' dear men of the higher seats who make boundaries out of people and play war, you have made victims out of us and all I seek to know is 

"How proud are you to be an Indian?"