When democracy will be up for sale,
it will be sold in batches of rights and violations.
Payments will be made in mob lynchings
and death threats and rape threats.
The sky will grow darker
with black blood spreading across it;
our land will birth walls instead of crops;
there will be fires in buildings with no water supply,
the fire fighters will be too late to save us.
There won’t be any reporters to cover
this calamity,
no newspapers will carry the headline
“Nation comes crumbling down”,
there won’t be any poets left
to fuse metaphor with tragedy,
you and I won’t be able
to make mention of this transaction.
Your silence and mine will be its cost.
Aditi Uniyal is a student from Mumbai, India.