Stand for Something

You force me to the edge and I fall into the lake, with my bleeding knees and cracked bones, just like my shattered dreams and broken hopes.

I stay there motionless, without any ounce of strength left in

my dying breath.

Sleeping on the surface with my eyes wide awake, I wait for

nobody and pray for nothing.

For who would listen to my beaten voice,

There are a thousand idols to look at and a million names to be

called upon,

And I don't know the exact route for my salvation.

I am served with two complicated medicines of "dharm"

and "karm", I can choose only one and if I defy one

Then the another one would get me killed.

My vision is blurry, and my will is breaking,

Just like the bangles of a widow being crushed under the shoes

of the men with white collars across their necks and

concealed leather belts below their bellies.

The men, men who lynched her husband

For not chanting the mantra of their imposed "dharm".

Welcome to the mess in my head, do you

Remember the lake? It's swallowing me,

Just like the mouth of a crocodile after

He had his grand feast of flesh and bone,

It feels as if this lake is swallowing all my senses.

I am not the only

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one here, there are a lot many others same as

me who are drowning deeper and deeper, like

suffocating fishes with injured gills.

From sitting on the stairs of some "masjid"

To visiting the roadside "mandirs" and to all the

lonesome midnight walks in the valleys of our divided minds, we are drowning in

the lake of questions, a million questions.

People around us try to bring us back to the land, they bring us

cardigans of different colours, made up of the same fibre, the fibre of

extremist beliefs and orthodox notions, of "my dharm" and "their

dharm".

We unwillingly wear them on our backs,

Yet the drops of questions never stop dripping from our bodies.

We have lodged for so long in the lake that no towels of dogma

can now soak us fully.

We make these droplets visible to public

Quite often, but only with the fear of

Receiving spits on our faces and shackles in our wrists. With

every voice we raise and every word we type, we are full of fears. But please

tell me what's scarier than letting the fears live within us?

Holding hands with the wind while fighting the storm, the voice

in head screams - "stand for something or die for nothing".