i.
trembling
like the string of our carding cane-bow,
me
and my cardress Rabiya
were
passing through the streets of those high caste people,
and
mobs gheraoed us from everywhere.
with
our heart-rending apologies and shrill cries to save us,
they
lighted a match
and
burnt us into ashes
together
with our rags and cotton-sacks.
ii.
me
and my companion Abdul
had
come from our village
to
the big city’s civil hospital
to
see our sick and elderly kin.
we
were frantically looking for his ward and cot
hopping
here and there,
but
in vain.
despaired
and helpless,
we
were wandering around like two mad men.
and
those who were chasing us shouted :
these
miyans have come to murder !
we
ran for our lives but the mobs caught us
and
threw us down from the third floor.
the
bigger mob waiting on the ground
bundled
our broken limbs and bones,
poured
a bottle of kerosene
and
set us afire with a spark of cigarette-lighter.
iii.
me
and my family – Gani, Latif, Raziya and Fatma
were
holed up into our ghetto,
in
our Meghani Nagar chawl home
all
shivering, but soundlessly
and
the mobs smelled us from nowhere.
they
torched nook and corner, roof and thatched walls.
we
kept on praying the Allah,
the
raging fire caught us alive,
we
turned into embers and ash.
(poem)
in the fanatic jihad of maligning our dharma,
the vengeful mobs put us on fire
instead of burying us into graves.
and lo, we are in their swarg instead of our jannat.
the king of heaven is the same, except for the name :
Allah, the Great is known here as Ishwar, the Great.
there is now no fear of conversion,
we are only afraid of the cycle of innumerable rebirths :
to take birth and anxiously wait for some vidharmi zealots,
and then enter into grave
and then lie on to the funeral pyre
and thus get martyred by this dharmachakta,
the cycle of dharma.
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