A puff of smoke. The slide of the crank.
My body sank. On being shot point-blank.
They say your life flashes before your eyes.
I lay on my driveway, and all I could see were lies.
Advertised. Aggrandized. Emphasized. Energized.
Humanized.
I saw through the deceit in prayer and the Lord.
And the lie I was told, that the pen was mightier than the sword.
I penned my thoughts, about you juggernauts.
Your sordid scheming and your murderous plots.
How you choose to abuse. Tighten the screws.
Divide and rule through religious coups.
Light the fuse, In the name of the Hindus.
But your clique. Can’t take critique.
Why would the oppressor care about the weak?
The meek shall inherit the earth it’s said.
NO, they shan’t. For they will be dead.
You can take away our keyboards and pens.
Take our cameras and smash our lens.
Spread fear like radioactive carcinogens.
Bring down The Fourth Estate!
Berate. Litigate. Decimate. Instigate. Castrate. Cremate.
“Journalists” on the payroll. Digital armies that troll.
Sedition laws and character flaws.
The more we bleed, the louder the applause.
Pause. As my throat runs dry. My vision fails.
My body shivers with the four names I exhale.
Dabholkar. Pansare. Kalburgi. Lankesh
Dabholkar. Pansare. Kalburgi. Lankesh
DABHOLKAR. PANSARE. KALBURGI. LANKESH
Damn humanity. Silencing a silenced minority. Marching towards singularity.
One nation under Ram. One people to reprogram.
Rewrite the past. Politics of caste.
Surveillance state. Prime real estate.
Crony capitalism. Unilateralism. Hyper-Nationalism.
This chasm beyond our control.
And those who dare to use their words, those who won’t be deterred.
Shall remain unheard. Their voices of dissent. That you resent.
You’ll pull out your swords, and call out your hordes.
The holy warriors against opinions abhorred.
How fragile is this God? That it takes arms to fight mere words?
How fragile is this faith? That you had to shoot me to stop me from being heard?
This crimson ink that spreads around.
My little garden. Your battleground.
You couldn’t debate. So, you sealed my fate.
Two gunmen and a country-made.
Snuffed the what’s the why’s the when’s.
You used the sword and killed the pen.