Hate

                              By Anupama Bhargava

I 

I am Ram

I am supposed to hate Rahim.

I am Rahim

I hate Ram.

I will therefore wipe his sterile frame with deviant strokes of violence.

Ram says: I'll purchase his damn history already hunched like an ancient man and parcel it in the newspaper to be burnt alive!

Screams flee through these muddled selves as each shoot the other through the temple.

II

They have successfully puppeted the lips of their children

And taught them the pidgin language of hatred, now deep in their leather.

Their trigger hand is already sticky with blood, but

They still stay nonchalant,

Sacrificing their brothers and burying them under the weight of mortgaged promise to get justice for the death of someone, whose name

Fingers can't seem to trace

But whose teachings are (they hope) deep in them.

And thus,

Mourning finally found its way to sail into another morning!

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posted 17 June 2003