What To Name It?...

“Hence when did thy breasts hate to feed me?

Hence then haven’t they heaved to need me?

Oh Mother! Why art thou so silent?

Those bombs and those ammos from the machine guns, they bother me no more.

They sound like a lullaby to me.

Wasn’t it you who reassured me that ‘this is life’ even before I was born?

Now why do you still lie?

I heard Papa’s plea to let you go

before they shot that merciless bullet into his head.

I saw it Ma, I saw it all...

ripped, stripped and writhing in pain,

I heard your final beg to let me go and take all that they wanted from you.

I cried then Ma, I cried aloud,
I cried my best with all I could;
thought that hearing me cry they would let you go.
They never stopped... and choked I lay.

My eyes still won’t open full and I only see darkness around.

Tears mixed with trickling blood have dried;
And my voice too fragile to rise above the noise outside me.
Oh Mom! Why don’t you shout for me now?

Was it wrong that I was born to thee?!

Why have they taken it all even before I can understand in a life time or more what war and hatred is all for?

Tell me Mom, tell me now from up above
Why won’t a bullet silence me too?”

(A Painting and Poem after witnessing what one shouldn't during the war in the island nation when we were busy complaining of potholes in our own.)