On September 28, 2015, 50-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched and his 22-year-old son Danish was brutally beaten for allegedly ‘storing beef’.Citizens hold placards during a silent protest “Not in My Name” against the targeted lynching, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. Credit: PTIThis is the fifth in the five-part ‘Poems in Saffron Ink’ series. Read the first, second, third and fourth parts.The Wire presents the ‘Poems Written in Saffron Ink’ series that capture the present environment of divisive politics, with threats to freedom of expression, where minorities feel unsafe and incidents of mob lynching have become common.§Prayer. Dadri. 2015. it is always the same, a prayerwhispered so many timesit spinsinto a holy rumourbeneath their nakedfeet that trace auspiciouscircles around a faceless idol—each stepis a blessing before they kill you it was 1992 when they saidyou prayed beneath archways that stoodupon ground blessedby another god,so they scaled those creepers, the petalscarved into the walls, and dangledatop the mosque like a divineannouncement—a flag thrownto the heavens, the sky corrugatedwith strands of saffron—they calledit prayer, before they killed you and they have killed youagain, now, their pious feetstampede through your threshold—you have eatenan animal, their animal, suckedon the bones of their god, they sayyou swallowed their sacredin a ritual of your own—you killedtheir god, so they killed you the hymn of sword and gunfirerings—their god is dead, and you are dead,and you will both remain there, decayinglike an ancient prayer, half-forgotten—the police say that you are dead, but nothingof the ghost-words they spokebefore they killed you—it must begod’s will that you have died in a disparate city the saffron mansits silent, not in lamentor mourning; he is praying—he wrotethe prayer that killed youand tomorrow he will writeyour epiloguea calf is born, adorned in marigoldsand copper bells and paradedthrough each village square and each traffic lightin every city—they have offered me a gunto kill your children, your cousins, anyonewho knelt before your god and ateyour feast, your sin, we can taste it—our tonguesroll with tinny consonants, stolen and distortedfrom some scripture, we carry tambourinesand cymbals and drums—clang of sword, refrainof gun—the calf leads us through the marketplaceand the shops lower their shutters as we passand we chant the asking price of your fleshPoorna Swami is a writer and dancer based in Bangalore.
