The Partition

The second column of Muslims passed,
Not a soul in our side had the strength,
To shower them with our words; cursed,
Along they passed as silent as us,
Drifting n with the hot and wild wind,
That very often burns our face,
As we cut through this desert; wretched.

O lovely dawn of freedom,
while you showered purple and gold,
half of us never knew what future held,
Singing and dancing beneath the relentless sun,
we hugged and kissed the conspirator's arms.

The line drawn that sliced Punjab,
The surgical tool that dissected Bengal,
Never seemed more poignant,
Till it ripped us apart from Lahore,
And made us to savor this journey.

Guided by a false pretense of safety,
Moving onto a false notion of liberty,
Living on the narrow verge of insanity,
A humanity was displaced into sheer poverty.

O, the world we left behind,
The luxury and beauty of Lahore,
The exotic parlors, the crimson sunsets,
And vast field of wheat that stretched on and on,
All of it replaced now by the creeping bareness,
Of the Thar.

All my journey was guided by two eyes,
Eyes of a child, barely ten,
That never showed a tinge of skepticism,
While we were in spells of rue,
His eyes were curious for more.

The child's father died last night,
Another victim in this great fight,
The column never stopped,
The child with eyes that moved me,
Were left behind all alone,
Everyone were fighting their own war.

There were no time to turn back,
The column should move on,
Cause terror echoed with the fresh gust,
The desert shall turn into a tomb of dust,
And somewhere along we will face,
The men armed with guns and swords.

A plane dropped of some food today,
One slice of bread for each stomach,
In the desert it were a piece of gold,
And in the pain it gives us hope,
Away form The Promised Land we move,
Onto an India away from us,
Mentally and physically.

The third column of Muslims passed,
They pitied us and our flight,
A word of caution and inspiration,
Someone even gave us a bottle of water,
The thought of it makes me proud,
We are brothers after all,
We will remain so forever and ever.

Nearing an India we never saw,
What we left behind could never be sought,
And what we want can never be bought,
Memories of Lahore still burns,
As we enter into a land of ruins.

God bless India, God save Pakistan,
And I even pray for that man who gave us water,
When shall the countries give each other the same?

Many of us are settled, many of us died,
Those who lived on still muse over the world,
What insanity?! What torture?!
to have brothers ripping each other apart,
And eating on the others' heart.

Many still pray for the countries,
True we are brothers,
We are seeds that sprouted in the same field,
Yet overgrown and often alone.