You Tell Us What To Do

After Faiz Ahmed Faiz

You tell us what to do:

our homes, our fields, our graveyards

uprooted by bulldozers of your squalid dreams.

Towards Ganga your faith flows, while ours

ebbs away. Fascist fingers that stain saffron

leave behind loose fragments of a land

lost. Crumbling. Disintegrating. Dying.

Unearthed tombs masks a haven now embellished with

saffron flags. You haunt these streets.

With your swords, and lathis, and saffron tilaks.

Hindutva is your birthright, so you shout:

Ayodhya needs to return to its archaic glory

Throw those traitors out!

Treachery laces these dry promises, bodies are trampled

once more as your hate gushes downstream; what’s

done is done, but all great Neptune’s

Ocean’s won’t wash away this blood.

by Esha Volvoikar