Nangla's Delhi

Work to break houses in the dwelling is in progress. Broken pieces of walls hold shoes, slippers, toys, calendars left behind by those who lived in them. Some more houses are breaking, and people walking around carry in them the imprints, knocking at their hearts.

But no one has any responses to this knocking.

Standing at the corners of lanes, people listen to the sobbing of those whose houses have been broken, are being broken. But there is nothing to do, except to console. Time had reached a point where it was difficult to leave anything, to seek and discover anything.

Was this destruction going to be a series of events, or something else? It is like a slow fire spreading through a dense forest. Looking at it, the thought of doing something boils in the heart. But who can win over time?

Fighting continuously, man's self slowly withers. How much ever you gather, when time comes with its balance sheets, what one has to pay will always be exhorbitant. One pays with all that one has. The rest of the extortion will happen later...

Now the footprints on the thresholds of houses will not be as dark as they they used to be. They will not be able to kiss the diversity of modes of being whose lips used to hum tunes. The reveried dancing of human mischief will now disappear.

Where every morning used to come wearing a colourful cloak of rituals and celebrations, and bring with it beautiful, attractive faces with smiles that could not be missed, where one would see groups of people roaming, celebrating some festival of the everyday, after today no one will be seen sharing happiness with others.

Eyes beholding this scene today slowly fill up with fear. On which oasis should people pause to think about their wayward fate? A fate that has left them like helpless souls, thinking now about ways in which they can manage not to leave behind small things they have gathered and now possess.

So much lies buried in the heart. But it sprouts out of the mouth, and the anger is all on ones own self.