Words stuttered in his mouth
When he tried to pronounce 'Machli' - A fish,
holding yesterday’s newspaper,
fresh to school, curious and enthusiastic, reciting Hindi rhyme,
'Fish - queen of water, water is her life,
scared off when you touch it, dies when taken out'
then suddenly stopped and asked, showing me a picture
'Machli - isn't she in water, why is she dead then?'
I had no answer -
to my atrocities and to my being a man
No answer to my invading the territories
or, shrinking their province,
forcing them to die or walk along with us -
the beasts.
Gaurav Verma, is a native of Dehradun, India and earned his MBA degree from IIT-Delhi. He started writing accidentally when few of his school assignments turned out to be so good that teachers started to believe he is either copying or someone in his family is a writer. He has been published in few of the anthologies. https://silentdreamz.wordpress.com
