Do you not remember?
When the dead were reduced to mere numbers.
When suffering, pain and loneliness
Followed us like a spectre?
When the doting mother of two
The kindly grandfather with laugh lines
Or the childhood friend with a beaming smile
Were tossed around in stacked hearses.
When young and old were washed away in rivers
Those, who were the suns of their own solar systems
Were left to languish on floors and parking lots
Or lost between columns, rows and numbers.
Millions of individual tragedies and laments
Lives, smiles and futures annihilated
Brought about by the hubris
Of the mad king and his army of fools.
And yet, it all lies forgotten
As nationalistic dementia sweeps through
The purveyors of propaganda back to peddling lies and half-truths
As snuffed out lives fade to black.
Shashank Shekhar is an editorial content writer for a global marketing communication firm.
Featured image credit: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters