Skip to main content

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From Meghna Pariyar Thadani To Jai Singh Rathod.

Disclaimer: My mother has always emphasized the joy of writing letters. During my school days, she guided and taught me how to write letters as a lesson in English literature. We were even taught to write telegrams as our CBSE books were outdated. She once mentioned that letter writing is therapeutic and calming. The act of pouring out one's feelings onto paper is like unpacking one's mind. You shed a tear or two, let the emotions flow through your pen, and write more until you feel better. With this in mind, I bring back the lost art of letter writing for a fictional character, Meghna Pariyar from the movie Janne Tu.. Janne Na.., who yearned to express her thoughts and feelings to Jai Singh Rathod. Letter writing allows us to heal our hearts and minds, to release our emotions, and to let them flow freely onto the page. Its obvious that the characters, their arcs and the emotional holds are fictional, they possibly have link to the few of us who have feelings but don't want...
9 comments
Read more

AITA?

It always starts the same Calendar creeps up Friendship Day The day everyone posts filters and friendship bands Inside jokes and perfect group shots Tagging the world Except me And I tell myself I knew I always knew this day was coming And yet it still sucker punches my ribs like those "harmless jokes" they made in law school the ones that drew laughs from crowds and bruises I couldn't explain They applauded my pain called it banter And I stayed like a fool Because passion had a price And I paid it in silence and sarcasm We made a club once remember Built on dreams sweat And a stupid little fire I carried like it could warm us all Till they told me "Leave" Because it was easier ofcourse it was a easy shutter  But I digress I've got a tectonic friend now she shifts the earth for others shares, seeks and askholes  with me And I’ve helped Hell I've listened But I never do the opposite  Because I don't want another me  Then there’s the new one The maybe ...
1 comment
Read more

Bombay Gotham

I stand on an island surrounded by the sea, a place that never wanted itself to be  Where the Victorian Gothic facades rise like hymns of another century, and the stone animals perched upon them breathe a silence that outlives every monsoon, every riot, every crumbling of the present. Owls with carved feathers guard the library domes, their eyes wide as if they alone can read the secrets the city hides beneath its noise. Cats, slender and alert, arch above courthouse arches, watching justice arrive late, as it always does here. Reptiles coil around forgotten pillars, their stone tails wrapped in stories that no one remained to finish. Grotesques cling to cornices with teeth bared sentinels of vanished fears, echoes of an empire that carved its nightmares into the body of the city. And beneath them, Bombay rearranges itself. Streets widen; skylines rise; old doors vanish behind new glass; war offices turn into cafés where people speak of futures the past could never have imagined. S...
3 comments
Read more