These days I force myself to watch
each and every horror
falling on you with an ugly precision
from the sky.
I watch your farms burn,
your children die,
your schools, tents, hospitals,
memories, and love being blown apart.
I force myself to listen to
the wails of men and women,
the flutter of the dying light
in the eyes of the survivors.
I don’t squint when I see
them dig out mutilated bodies
from the debris,
or run with blood-soaked sacks
carrying dismembered people, still breathing.
I raise the volume
even when the bare-faced war-leaders
come on, justifying massacres,
giving their sins a different name.
It’s wedding season in my country now.
So, yes, I watch with wide open eyes
the grotesque colours
of peethi, panetar, and kumkum
fill my screen.
No, I do not swipe up and select
scenes, shades, songs….
I watch until the glass screen
that separates me from you cracks,
until my silence is wounded,
guilty and ashamed.
But I refuse to write.
I know the treachery of poetry
the way it folds and unfolds truth
between the layers of its textured fabric,
the way its patterns excite and distract,
the way it sings, paints, and embroiders
my shame and your pain,
the way it conjures up beauty
from the most heinous spaces.
Forgive me,
for I shall not write
about this barbaric time in poetry.
Pratishtha Pandya is senior editor at the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI).
