After Saadat Hasan Manto
When they redrew the borders,
a dog was sleeping. Canine
wisdom is superior to its human
variant, after all. Upon waking
up, the dog moved between this
side and that, wagging its tail,
eating biscuits they threw at it.
This Side claimed it as its own,
then That Side did the same.
But as it walked between This
and That, both sides bristled
and pulled out their guns.
On its next walk to lunch,
the dog lurched to the ground.
Its blood drenched This Side,
then That Side. Neither side
claimed the carcass as its own.
A sharp appraisal of the current times. Lovely Bhas!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Anannya.
DeleteWow! How well you have written this... and so topical!
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot, Charu.
DeleteWritten so well. Powerful and so descriptive of our times. I remember reading a lovely book to my daughter about a people divided by a wall - the beeblebees and the beebleboos (I think). This reminded me of that story. The last line here is painful and unfortunately, true of our times. Thank you for this, Bhaswati.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing that story with me, Geethanjali. We need more of them to make sense of the madness engulfing this world.
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