Cometh has the day to exchange wishes and gifts,
Cometh has the time to forget all quarrels and rifts.
On this auspicious occasion love wins over hate,
With festivity in air, we’re bound to celebrate.
Inboxes are flooded with GIFs and wishes,
Markets overflowing with fingerlicious dishes.
Although enthusiasm for lighting this year has declined,
It’s nothing but our attitude towards China- redefined.
Still people are happily burning holes in their pockets,
by spending wastefully on bombs, sparklers and rockets.
Whatsapp, FB, Twitter filled with messages of elation,
Wait! Is it really elation or merely an obligation?
I really don’t want to offend or question people’s delight,
as I’m not gleeful, I’m rather gloomy and in a state of fright.
The reason behind this depression is why this verse is being written,
I can relate to the pain of hundreds of families which are grief stricken.
Yes! The kins of those brave hearts who are giving the supreme sacrifice,
The wretched loved ones of those for whom ‘Patriotism’ is the only edifice.
Taking bullets upfront from the indiscriminate firing of a rogue neighbour,
Laying their lives and leaving behind their families to toil and labour.
How easily we show our patriotism by just sitting in our cosy beds,
without sensing, how tough it is for the widow of a soldier who’s dead.
Some leave behind them a new born, some an adolescent brother,
For some cries a newlywed partner, for some an ailing mother.
Festivities turn into mourning, smiles converted to frown,
A bullet from the enemy, turns their world upside down.
But this love for the land runs in their blood, and their kin now come out in numbers,
Younger brothers vow to follow footsteps, swearing by their slain brothers’ embers.
Such passion requires a fire lit within,
They cry, they die just to make us grin.
But what do we really pay them back with,
Forgetting their sacrifices and pain forthwith.
The news of these deaths since days has made me feel miserable,
How could I celebrate then in an environment so dull and unstable?
The least I could do now is to light a Diya for each of my martyred brother,
To pray that their souls rest in peace, to ask some peace for my mourning mothers.
My reply to your messages might have been late, but I think you’ll understand,
I urge you to pray for their souls, to light a candle in their name in that candle stand.
Giving tributes to them, won’t that be a Diwali in true sense?
Let’s take out some of our precious time for their remembrance.
What else could I say, helping those in need with whatever we could,
will actually make a Happy Diwali for a large part of the humanhood.
Diverting resources from leisure to fulfill necessities,
Won’t that be in real sense a land full of festivities?
-JAI HIND
Mohak Chaudhary ; 30.10.2016
The Screaming Introvert 