I am sorry my fellow countrymen and women.I am sorry that I cannot protect youAs I helplessly watch you being attacked and hurtWith weapons that slash the flesh and sear the heart..I am sorry my brothers and sisters.I am sorry that I cannot help youAs the frenzied mob humiliates youAnd spits abuses and brandishes weapons at you..I am sorry my brother.I am sorry that I can do nothing while you are deniedThat little space in the temple fairWhere you were joined to that glorious festivalIn which many devotions came together..I watch silently,The fear on the girl's face as she stands at the college gateWondering if she will be allowed to enterThose class rooms and join those friendsFrom whom she has been suddenly debarred..I watch silently,As I see an old man staring hopelesslyAt the destroyed remains of his poor cartNot understanding why, he has suddenly become a strangerAt the place where he was a familiar presence for many years..I watch silently,As a little boy picks the coins from the debris of his father's battered shop,And women weep the loss of the home they built over many years,Little by little,Till their daughters grew too old to remain in itand their husbands are too old to leave it..I watch silentlyAs the pimps of power,The traders of religion,The demagogues of hate,The profiteers of violence,Map new pathways of bigotryAnd doodle boundaries in blood..And I can only promise you this, my friends,My Rama is gentle and righteousAnd as long as he is in meI will never be able to hate you or hurt you..And I only know this my friends,The tree that shades us together by the road,The river that waters both our fields,The dust that blows into our eyesAnd fills our breath,Is made of the ashes and bonesOf our dead ancestors,Inseparable in death..And I want to ask you to wait,Till this tide of hate subsides,Till this frenzy of violence abates,Till these shrill commands of men turned mad with power are silenced,Till these machines turned to weapons come to a halt..Let us wait till the name of Rama will be chanted once againAs if he were a brother, a son, a father, a beloved,Let us wait till the azaan can echo undisturbed in the early hours of dawn and across the day,Let us wait till the church bells can toll uninterrupted for the dead..And then my people,We will hear in these soundsour many voicesBorn of a shared land.We will sing songs at the confluencesof intertwined lives.And we will embroider the routines of our livesWith the patterns of peaceand the threads of neighbourliness and friendship.
