There is a place in the golden city,
somewhere near the golden temple.
A piece of land,
painted black and red,
for there hit a flood,
of ash and blood.
I look inside the well,
that reeks of death.
I see a mother clinging on to her son,
clasping him too tight,
shedding tears of her plight,
but never giving up on the fight.
I see a man reaching out to his lover,
wishing he could be her cover,
hoping to feel her breath for the last time,
before their love story became a shrine,
for all the incomplete stories,
and abandoned territories.
I watch a little girl shiver in fear,
her tiny body waiting to disappear,
as her pink skin gets lost in blood smears.
I look inside the well,
and I see the death of humanity,
spiralling into insanity.
I look inside the well,
I see the sparseness of love,
and a mourning dove.
I look inside the well,
and I see 1919 looking up in dismay,
at 2021 who doesn’t look down for a way,
instead looks up like a stray.
102 years later,
we still haven’t learnt,
that history repeats itself,
if you don’t learn from it.
We still can’t see,
what lies right beneath us,
the look of a democracy dead,
however we’ve looked at the skies for too long,
it’s not the Earth to which we belong.
The well screams warnings,
but none shall we heed,
for we don’t realise the need.
They say,
it’s changed a bit,
it doesn’t look like a place,
where screams are heard to this day.
it’s said that broken is beautiful,
that when you fill the cracks of something broken with gold,
it becomes more magical.
But how do you fill the cracks of a place,
where blood has made its way through every crevice?
I look inside the well,
it is a space we don’t want to face,
but Jallianwala Bagh, they call the place.
Featured image: Pariplab Chakraborty