Santosh Bakaya
One more teenager has died
In yet another killing unjustified
Was this killing barbaric
Just another statistic?
Hearts cried, fires raged, passion smouldered
As a distraught father his lifeless body shouldered
From his heart, a piece was torn asunder
And buried six feet under.
A family was shattered
Its hopes and aspirations battered
They entombed his passions and dreams
While his mother throttled her screams.
Lying slumped- dreamless, son less
Desperately praying to be breathless
Like her bubbling, teenage son
Who would never again gambol in the sun
In Kashmir’s small village of Palhalan in Pattan.
Was he just one more lively, nineteen year old
Whom lifeless statistics had taken in its fold?
Of rancour and venom merely a collateral damage
Which was out on its mission to ravage and savage?
No, he was not a statistic cold
But a bud about to unfold
And spread its fragrance all around
On a hate ravaged ground.
He was the lilt and cadence of a rhyme still born
Waiting for a bright morn to be born
But, alas now he was gone
Without witnessing the birth of a new dawn
And that elusive rhyme to be born.
(A novelist by profession, Santosh Bakaya is a Kashmiri pandit based in Jaipur.)
