I think what else is new. Shrug who has time for this now — there’s a mob beside the gol gappa stall, shouting Pakistan Murdabad — a little boy follows his mother looking down at his candle so he doesn’t drop it and sings dutifully ‘Murdabad, Murdabad’, now passing by Krishna Mandir where they make the biryani we eat for lunch, us lapsed Hindus and when the orange rice hits our tongue we’re not thinking about anything other than how cheap it is and how filling, how generously salty. I run behind them asking kisne organize kiya — who thought this up but no one seems to know so I carry on with my shopping, looking for a new mug because even under threat of war little things break all the time. In the morning an onslaught of news and we will need the coffee. In the shop an Arab man asks me to translate, and I caution him overfamiliar, be careful. He explains: ‘but I’m from Iran / been here eight years / I feel so bad when I heard the —’ and I interrupt it doesn’t matter, it’s dangerous, they’re being stupid. Hating witnessing his I’m-sorry-for-what-I-didn’t-do dance. When Trevor Noah with the dimples and the hard knocks and the good book says our pain is funny, at first it doesn’t really register. There are more pressing things than wondering why even now our pain is a punchline, why when words come out of mouths that beckon mothers ma / ammi / amma, mouths which can hum the wordless chorus to ishq bina kya jeena yaara like a call and response, they all sound in a world where Apu is forever, everything we say is a joke. Even if the words are ‘maine kya kiya?’ On Twitter which is the new-news there is one video among many: a mob surrounds Kashmiri traders — we’re so fucking desi we lick the drama from our fingers — don’t say you don’t see how a large number of people would hand chest-thumping a microphone and play out their Sunny Deol fantasies — solve everything that afflicts them by dishoom-dishooming The Enemy. Trevor yaar, even when we die there’s shehnais playing, our daadis weep in raag Darbari unless they live in Kashmir then maybe they’ve lost the count of how many have disappeared and who will wait at the door hoping, who will hold their heart in their mouth if the soldiers call again, who will hold the children unsighted by pellets, who will tell the women their testimonies are a conspiracy, who will carry the news of the civilian killed by shrapnel from our India-Pakistan match and he isn’t in the headlines or a hashtag, bataa, who will do it When I think of Trevor Noah mimicking armies holding guns, I think of the Pakistani girl I kissed in college — lying in her bed on an Ontario spring night her lips are soft on mine after she said so do it then, the unreality of a crush coming true. When I leave forever, I am wearing her electric blue booty-shorts and she says to our white friend we’ll never see each other again — and it is the truest truth. I think of Khalid Sir who drew the music out of my eight year old bright-eyed unafraid and drank tea on our sofa, his white head bowed and kind eyes and kind hands playing my dinky Casio and writing a Diwali card then posting it to Calcutta where it arrives with bright yellow sunflowers on. We were away from home, it was unthinking this drawing close. I think of the song and dance Bollywood choreographs in Kashmir where it’s all about ishq bina kya jeena yaara — except when it’s about terrorists. Terrorists always have beards. Beard is code for Muslim and Muslim is code for terrorist. If you don’t already know that you must be a terrorist. Almost twenty years since Dil Se where the (silent) woman whose backstory is rape blows herself up. We’re still pulling cartographies static, and people winning awards for gritty films, someone writes a book, and no one important keeps dying without embracing Shahrukh Khan in the climax. No one important keeps count of the years or buries the bodies. Everyone who matters forms an army screaming Jai Hind. Say Jai Hind, motherfucker else we’ll surround you with fists. Hike up the plane fares as you fly to where barbed wire marks the spot. If anyone tries to say anything we’ll call it FAKE NEWS — leap to the scene saying PAKI AT HEART??? A horde of bots, or worse — real people who think war maane video-game. Shut your mouth woman, take a break — have a dickpic. Indian women are better off scenery — even our stars become background like in that Coldplay video (still no talking!) where she runs after pigeons for no reason. Throws up her hands with Holi colours alone and laughs at the skies. Keep dancing. Chal na, it’s not racist. Admit it, you laughed a little. Come on, it’s funny how you die.

Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.