this country's got genocide on its mind

and i'm not surprised anymore.

i stopped being surprised when that boy—

who used to sit beside me in the physics lab

querying my caricatures and copying the chaos

i called my notes— started posting doctored

videos calling for riots.

stopped being surprised when the whacky

lanky girl who i helped during the exams shared

conspiracy theories of muslim population takeover.

or when the boy who kept getting scolded

in the school assembly for his spiky hair

and pencil-fitted pants could only be seen

monochrome kurtas with a skullcap strangling

the freedom of his hair.

and again when the boy i shared the brief parts

of my laughter with in the cramped space of the morning

started putting up statuses where hanuman chest-thumped

to DJ-music hovering over cowering skullcapped trollfaces.

as the lotus blooms in the mud it spews

the hand is busy jerking a negotiation in its own pants.

this country's got genocide on its mind

and i want to be surprised, roused, revolted

but every dredge of action is washed down

the solipsistic sinkhole of the washed-out self—

only mere words clogging this drained-up drain.

~ ajay

16/5/2022