APPEASED, FINALLY

The hell I am appeased, finally.

I remember the day, you trudged up the stairs
To my second floor government house
And slumped into one of the chairs
Out in the narrow sit out.
You looked the same to me, just a little tired
And then you shared with me, in a matter of fact voice
But with a finality of a dagger wound.
Finally I have done it,
Got Avtar’s widow married off
The groom is decent, the best I could find
For my daughter-in-law,
And he has promised to care for her
She had been so adamant, so unwilling to marry
She insisted she had the job,
I had managed to get for her
Sufficient to meet the needs
Of hers and Avtar’s baby son
But I had no way out but this
I had given my word to her father
The day she came to my house as Avtar’s bride,
To treat her like my daughter
And finally I have done my duty.
You had closed your eyes with a soundless sigh.
Your eyes dearest uncle were dry
As you shared this with me, your friend’s daughter.
I remember they had killed Avtar Veer
Who had forcibly accompanied
His bride’s old father, who had dared to venture out,
To get medicines for his bride’s ailing mother
On the fateful day, of the ‘84 riots
They both lay dead on the road in cold blood
Beaten and stabbed to death
Their turbans off their roughly shorn heads.
Avtar’s bride, of just a few months
Pregnant with his unborn son
Waited at her ailing mother’s side
For the medicines, her father and her husband to return.
Both were widowed together, mother and daughter
With the same blow, the same place, the same way, the same time
By the same drunken butchers and preachers of hate.
Two of them have been marked uncle and finally declared “found guilty”
You are no more dear uncle to see justice triumph
After 29 years of the crime.
 MY FIRST TEACHING ASSIGNMENT

Finally justice triumphed after such a lonely drudge

There are no haloes around the judges’ heads
They have pronounced their verdict
And two of the villains implicated
Have been finally declared “FOUND GUILTY”
Of killing you, my Class VIII
My children, my friends, my students.
You have turned to dust
Your ashes blown away by winds
You were raped and butchered and set on fire
With tyres around your necks,
Barely into your teens my young ones,
Your bodies lay unclaimed for days,
Your homes torched and families burnt.
Cold blooded professional killers and butchers
Were recruited to do the job.
How fearlessly you faced death for faith
Like the Guru’s four martyred sons
Ajit, Jujhar, Fateh and Zorawar
At Chamkaur and Sirhind
Finally you can sleep my little angels
The honourable sleep of death
Which you met undeservedly
For the crime you had not done
Your innocent laughter rings once more
In the school building which was razed to the ground
On the fate less day of the ‘84 riots.
Good old Mr. Bedi, the old estate officer,
May his soul rest in peace
Was burnt alive while fighting till the last
To save ‘his school building’
Of which they left not a stone
Not even rubble as a reminder
All you could see was the black soot rising
In this insignificant place Trans-Yamuna
Turned into a vast Jallianwala
By our own fellow countrymen.
We all had parted never to meet again
But I know we will meet up there
In heaven my friends
To play the games we left mid way on the 31st
Of that bloody October in 1984.
I am crying for you my first class
My very first teaching assignment
The children of my heart
Your death has not been in vain,
If people solemnly pledge this communal rot to end.