The sky is tired of holding our jets—
they fall like iron rain,
wings folded in surrender.
Below, the earth opens its mouth
for buses that burn mid-prayer,
for trains that forget their tracks
and arrive uninvited into drawing rooms
where families still pretend to watch the news.
where families still believe in tomorrow.
Our air is a slow acid that forgives no lung.
A hundred of us die every week,
quietly, routinely,
the way one forgets a name.
Our diaspora carries the smell of shame across oceans;
they are spat on in foreign queues
for the sins we taught them to commit in our name.
Our tourists photograph poverty and call it colour;
they leave behind plastic Ganeshas
and diarrhoea in five-star pools.
Our rupee collapses daily,
a currency learning humility the hard way.
Our films sell us a country that never existed.
Our news sells us enemies we can no longer find.
Our songs sell us rage in 120 beats per minute.
Even our garbage has garbage now;
no corner of the map is clean enough
to win the game we play against ourselves.
Our sons brandish swords outside mosques
on days meant for fasting and reflection.
Our daughters gyrate for coins thrown by algorithms
and the Prime Minister calls it employment.
Our courts move like dying glaciers;
justice arrives long after the crime has retired.
Our milk is not at all milk.
Our paneer is yesterday’s plastic melted with hope.
Our medicines murder the children they swear to save.
Our Roads Minister peddles sugarcane dreams
while the highways swallow trucks whole.
Our policemen grow richer than gods
counting cash in the dark.
Our mountains, our rivers, our coasts
are parcelled out before sunrise:
Adani on Tuesdays, Ambani on Wednesdays,
the rest of the week the vultures take turns.
Our diaspora is cursed in foreign tongues,
our tourists leave temples of trash
on every beach they touch.
Our movies teach us to hate correctly,
our news teaches us to fear correctly,
our songs teach us to salute correctly.
Yet every morning
a billion hearts still beat
inside this bruised, impossible body.
We wake, we curse, we queue, we pray,
we post another reel, another rant,
we die a little, we live a little,
we refuse to leave
this burning, beloved, maddening home.
India, my love-
you break me daily
and still I return
to kiss your wounded feet.
