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Panipat Again

This…
This is another Panipat.
Not fought for kings or crowns—
But for water, for breath, for survival.
The war that came before the world ran dry.
And now,
that war bleeds across borders,
like old wounds reopening with fresh salt.

We will remember...
A meadow murdered
A valley that never surrendered
Question stripped before bullets
A convoy turned coffin.
their silence louder than any anthem.
Soldiers burned in their own base,
in their own sleep, in their own land.
Where uniforms bled while the airbase echoed with gunshots
meant to unmake our resolve
All turned into battlegrounds.
Ten men held a city hostage
while the world watched and wept.

You call these “incidents”?
These are not incidents.
These are scars.
National wounds with names and dates,
Carved into our memory with bullets.

And yet—
We forget to blame the ones who drew the lines.
The architects of division,
mapmakers of misery.
Lines that slice through hearts,
homes,
history.

For them—
it’s still Mission Accomplished.
They send arms in crates
and peace in press releases.
They fund fires,
then pose beside the ashes.

And here I am,
Told to celebrate a “response.”
To clap for a surgical strike,
a missile fired,
a camp destroyed.
But how do I cheer
When all I see is a child’s toy
amid rubble?

I do not mourn the enemy.
But I mourn the innocence
killed in the crossfire of rhetoric and revenge.

I see what’s coming—
A Hiroshima on my Bharat.
A Nagasaki on their Pakistan.
And what then?
Will the dead carry flags to heaven?
Will borders matter to dust?

Ask this—
Have we fed every mouth
before biting into each other’s necks?
Are we “developed”
Or just decorated
with weapons and wounds?

Anger is no longer a spark.
It’s wildfire.
Hope has drowned in red rivers.
And fear—
Fear is the only anthem we all know by heart.

This…
This is another Panipat.
And we’re all in it.
Barefoot. Blindfolded.
Begging the gods
to pause this madness
before there's no soil left to bury our dead.

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