Elie Wiesel has borne witness
So that the dead do not die twice
Once in fact and once in the forgetting
Urvashi Butalia has written unflinchingly of Partition
And Manto, of course, Manto
But for us Toba Tek Singh was a story
And the Holocaust, moving movies
We read, we watched, but we did not feel
We did not feel afraid
With us, growing up was without growing pains
Were we naive? Or foolish? Or blind?
Not to see the writing on the wall
That day in 1984 when we laughed
At their measly two seats in Parliament
And patted ourselves on our collective back
And praised the Great Indian Democracy
And said India is too diverse, too multi-cultural
To support one view of History
With us or against us has come to pass
I am scanning my brother’s face anxiously
To see
If he
Thinks like me
And in his eyes I see
The reflection of my anxiety