The Trident and the Prey (for the ones marked out)

P. Sudhakaran

First, it was a sharp trident,
hunting in the dark,
piercing the silence of a womb.
The prey was unborn, unnamed.
Then came the chase through open streets
where names became weapons,
and prayers, an incitement.
Men were dragged, women caged in fire,
children left to bury the echo of their own cries.
They came with torches,
setting ablaze not just homes
but histories, camaraderie,
neighbourhoods woven over centuries.
Ash blew across the fields
where once hands joined at harvest.
The prey was marked by faith,
the hunter shielded by silence and slogan.
They came with holy cows,
unleashing mobs on kitchens and courtyards
where mothers stirred lentils and hope.
The charge was meat, the punishment lynching,
while the nation scrolled on.
 
The trident rose taller than trees,
its shadow stretching across classrooms and courts.
They shouted Ram…
And Gandhi, in the quiet corner of memory,
whispered Hey Ram… Hey Ram
A missionary, his wife, his sons,
burnt on a pyre lit by hate.
And in the smoke, Joan of Arc wept
for a land that once welcomed every prayer.
The hunter’s trail is a map of wounds,
the nation, a deep cry swallowed by silence.
The prey lies scattered in headlines
we quickly forget.
 
But this is not the India Tagore dreamed,
not the vast land where the mind is fearless
and the head held high,
where compassion binds the many into one.
This is not the India for which
the Mahatma murmured Hey Ram.
This is a field where the hunter walks free,
and the prey, always the prey,
bleeds into the soil of our forgetting.
And the silence chokes the throat.