Deepak Vohra

Debris

Debris

— After a school collapsed

 

It wasn’t just bricks.

Not just beams and plaster.

It was a hundred years —

a hundred years of chalk dust,

dreams with school bells,

and mothers packing bread

with red chilies and trust

in the shape of a folded napkin.

 

The roof came down.

And when it did,

it took a school,

a child,

a blackboard.

It took the lesson plans

and made them tombstones.

 

The clock — it froze.

The cameras didn’t.

 

The men in coats came.

They bent their knees,

not to weep,

but to find a good angle,

like they were choosing

a graveyard by camera lens.

 

The media opened their jars —

tears on tap,

and guilt washed clean

in holy water ratings.

 

A boy —

yesterday,

he was reciting tables.

Today,

his fingers stick out of the rubble

like a question

no one will answer.

 

No one asks

why the roof cracked.

Why pages turned to ash.

Why chalk wrote

with blood now.

 

The TV screams:

\"Nehru did it!\"

And while they argue over names,

they build another wall

between god and god.

 

Democracy —

it holds a press meet

on its own stiffened body.

 

No,

the wombs don’t grow futures now.

They grow contracts —

with clauses and cement.

 

Children cry —

and the numbers rise.

Each scream is a cell

in a spreadsheet.

Each name,

a row with a serial number.

 

This country?

You won’t find it on a map.

It doesn’t ping on radar.

It’s the hush

in a poor man’s eyes at night —

the soft blink

of a star long dead.