When the water came, sprawling
Underred at its own
Even intent, it said, “I am come
To remind you that rich, poor, man
Woman, or child, old or young,
Literate or illiterate, Sunni or
Shia or Ahmedia, low caste or high,
Tantric, Vaishnav, or Trika, living
Upstream or downstream, or by
Hillside resort, nationalist or
Separatist, you are all the same.
Do see that the rich man’s, the
God-man’s, the beggar man’s bone
Bloats without distinction
In the waters of extinction.”
Those that believe, or believed,
That not a leaf turns without that
Nod from God, sighed and said, “it
Is He sent the waters, as He sends
Everything else; and since everything
He sends is ever for some good,
The coming of the flood must also
Be understood as a benighn
Catastrophe, reminiscent of times
When similarly He destroyed by flood
His own creation and saved the sound
Of all species in Noah’s Ark, gifting
Us our present world from that heavy
Day’s good work. Thus, bemoan
Not the failures of this government or that,
Since God’s alone is the governance
And God’s the State. Pick up the pieces,
Give thanks for what is left us,
Learn the lesson of oneness,
Sent form above, and turn
From ignorant hate to love.”
But others, believing little of what
They preach, snarled, ”such
Annihilation cannot come from
God, even if we say no leaf turns
Without His nod; when our incomes
Burgeon, or the causes we blare
Flourish, we know that comes from
God; but, it is clear the government
Is to blame when our purposeful aim
Is thwarted and our comfort flawed.
Know that the waters that have thus
Leveled us beyond remedy were sent
Not by God but a sinister agency
That draws its manifest at our
Enemy’s repressive behest. Renew,
Therefore, your intransigence
And the stridency of cause;
Let not the waters give pause
To our uncompromising alienation
And ineluctable refusal of assimilation.
And even if God did indeed send
The flood, misconstruing our love,
Remember that wars have been
Fought in Heaven before now.”
A third in the conclave gave
Voice to thoughts only whispered
Before in safe confines: “If you
Indeed have faith, then look not
For cause or redress beyond God’s
Will; but if you merely fake upon
Convenience, then go a step further,
And make bold to sense the truth
That the cause and the redress
Lie here with us alwlays, if only
We cease to equivocate; we make
The suffering, and we make the fate.
The chosen may not just be the ones
Who share our faith; among those
We call of ‘infidel’ birth are men
And women of great and noble worth.
Why else would God have sent them
To inhabit the very same earth?
The waters came because, sunk
In our greeds, we never once looked
To the needs of cloud and sky,
Forest and glacier, sun and the sea,
But ravaged all these endlessly.
God is not some faraway finger
Turning our wheels from season
To season. God resides in the best
Of human reason. And reason thinks
If God indeed created all there is,
Why should any faith, any race, any
Breed of the human species be
At greater or lesser ease, sisters
And brothers, from those we call ‘others’?
The truth is we make the loves
And the hates, the friends and the
Enemies, the droughts and the floods,
The good times and the bad; instead
Of faulting this or that for the flood,
Know that it came from the ignorant
Refusals of our own inflated head.
If you listen carefully, that is
What the waters said. Thus, even
As we mourn our kith and kin,
Our sunken paradise, let us, when
We rise again, learn from the wise
Of our legends who were neither Hindus
Nor Muslims but sages how to reject
The syllables of hate and turn new
Pages. Let our rebirth show the way
Again not just to the sub-continent
But to a world that rages in ill intent.
Doing so, we would have put the flood
To good use. Let us turn our back
On what we chose before,
And afresh choose.”
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