Is this truly a day of independence?

Less than ten minutes before the wheels left tarmac,
two hundred and forty-two lives
sat fastened in foetal seats,
tea cooling in plastic cups,
thumbs twitching over glowing screens,
minds rehearsing office slides, forgotten birthdays,
lovers’ texts left on “read.”
No one knew. Not a single soul.
Their names were already trembling
on the lip of silence,
already being whispered
by that most impartial registrar—Death.

Below, on solid ground,
the humdrum went on unbothered—
medical students scribbling dosages
in sterile halls; a nurse munching chips by the stairwell;
a professor grumbling over unpaid grants.
The kind of banal day that never earns poetry—
until it ends in pulverised concrete
and bones like chalk beneath metal.

And all it took—was a glitch perhaps.
A burnt wire. A bolt forgotten.
A breath’s-worth of mechanical betrayal,
and entire galaxies—
entire futures—collapsed into dust.
Just like that.
Without preface. Without justice.

And we? The voyeurs,
the obituary-scrollers and newsfeed-mourners?
We return to our cockfights—
scrapping over flags and fictions,
over castes that claim heaven,
creeds that damn,
borders drawn by drunks on old colonial maps.
We raise walls, chant slogans,
lynch in the name of gods
who have long stopped listening.

We forget that gravity is godless.
That fire has no ideology.
That death does not check your documents—
it cannot pronounce your surname.
You could be rich as the richest man,
or a lad unlawfully dragged by uniformed boots.
It ends the same:
flesh surrenders, eyes stare blankly,
history books close.

What does one say to the mother in Kerala
whose son studying in Kyiv
came home zipped in foreign silence?
Or to the boy in Raqqa
who lost all four limbs,
but not his stammering faith
in the idea of peace?
What does one say to the girl in Gaza
drawing flowers in the rubble
while drones carve thunder in the sky?

We keep saying “never again”
while building higher fences.
We light candles and call it healing.
We post flags in our bios—
a Palestinian one,
then a Ukrainian,
then whatever’s trending next.

But let’s speak plainly:
We are a species drunk on division.
We are magicians of forgetting.
We weep for strangers
only when they burn on camera.
We feel compassion
only when corpses come in clusters.

And yet, every now and then,
death, in all its calm arithmetic,
pulls the rug from beneath us.
It reminds us
that we are not kings of permanence—
we are tenants on borrowed time.

We will all die.
The bigots and the bridge-builders.
The tyrants and the poets.
Those with blue passports
and those without country.
The ones who plant bombs,
and the ones who plant tomatoes.

And when we die,
our bodies will not request
a caste certificate.
They will not need Aadhaar.
They will not demand veneration.
They will rot. Gloriously. Democratically.
They will join the honest loam.

So what, then, is the point
of all this tribal madness?
Why do we lace our short, stupid lives
with so much hatred and hubris?

Isn’t it time we bowed
before our shared frailty?
Isn’t it time we asked—
what if kindness is the only thing
that survives the wreckage?

For in the end,
when the smoke has cleared,
and all that’s left is bone,
you will not know
whether the hand you held in death
believed in your god,
or spoke your language,
or cheered for your side.

You will only know
that it, too, was trying
to hold on.
Just like you.

Some among you may not find your way to poetry with ease or instinct, and so, in the spirit of clarity and fellowship, I have endeavoured to render in prose what I sought to express in verse.

Less than ten minutes before take-off, 242 souls sat strapped into their seats—some sipping tea, others scrolling through their phones, a few perhaps fretting over unfinished work or mundane family squabbles. Not one of them knew they were living their last ordinary moments. Not one had an inkling that their names were already being whispered by death.

And down below, on solid ground, medical students and staff were caught in the most routine of routines—classrooms, corridors, coffee breaks—utterly oblivious to the fact that their lives were about to be obliterated in seconds, without warning, without reason.

All it takes is one unfeeling mechanical failure, and just like that—entire worlds collapse.

Yet we, the rest of us, continue to live under the grand illusion of permanence. We cling to flags, fight over imaginary lines on maps, draw blood over caste, creed, class, skin, and surname—knowing full well that the grave swallows us all the same. Muslim or Christian, rich or poor, Brahmin or Dalit, soldier or civilian—it doesn’t matter to fire or steel or gravity. Death doesn’t check your documents.

We go to war for power, kill for pride, alienate in the name of tradition—and for what? So our names can outlive us in history books written by men just as doomed? All our bigotries, posturing, and tribal loyalties are flattened in the face of a single crash—an indifferent plume of smoke rising from the earth as if to say: None of it mattered.

And when such a tragedy does occur, we weep. We call them “innocent lives lost.” We share posts. We light candles. And then, like clockwork, we go right back to hating, hoarding, dividing—forgetting that the same death waits at our doorstep.

Is this the best of what we are? Must it always take unspeakable grief to remind us of our shared fragility? Must we always need a body count to feel compassion for strangers?

The cruel irony is this: we spend our lives trying to be separate—by borders, beliefs, birthrights—but in death, we are finally, and completely, the same.

SOULMATES BEYOND ROMANCE

[Soft ambient music begins — perhaps piano and strings. A gentle breeze. The sound of distant birdsong.]

Narrator (calm, reflective tone):

Not all soulmates come bearing roses… or ringed in gold.
— (gentle pause) —
Some arrive without ceremony.
They slip into our lives quietly…
A friend. A mentor. A passing traveller.
And though their time with us may be brief…
They leave footprints — not upon the sand —
…but upon the soul.

— (longer pause, let the idea settle) —

A soulmate is not always wrapped in romance.
They are those rare, sacred presences
whose souls — by some hidden law of harmony —
resonate with our own.
It is as though a bell were struck inside the chest the moment we meet them.
Not always loudly…
…but with a strange, unmistakable clarity.

They mirror the parts of us long forgotten…
…or never dared to know.
They rouse us from slumber,
disturb our settled dust,
and call us gently — or not so gently — into growth.

[Music swells slightly, then recedes.]

It is tempting to believe a soulmate is “the one” —
the singular, eternal companion, sealed by fate.
But truth has a subtler voice.

Some soulmates are not meant to stay.

They come in times of change…
…in seasons of uncertainty…
…and when their work is done,
they go.

Not with drama,
nor with betrayal —
but with the quiet dignity of a chapter
that closes exactly when it must.

— (soft pause) —

And yet…
though they leave,
they are never truly gone.

The impact remains —
like perfume in a room where something beautiful once passed.

We are left changed.
Not always painlessly.
But always profoundly.

[Brief pause. Background shifts to birdsong, soft wind.]

A soulmate may be the friend
who sees past your rehearsed smile
and speaks to the ache beneath it.

They may be the teacher
who glimpses your hidden fire
when all others noticed only smoke.

They may be the stranger
whose words pierce you to the core —
…and whom you never see again.

Their gift is not in their permanence…
but in their disturbance.
The holy disquiet they awaken in us.
They tear the veil…
they name the question…
and they leave us —
braver.

[Music grows subtly hopeful — a single violin note sustained.]

And perhaps…
perhaps the most sacred calling of all
is this:

To become the soulmate
we once searched for in others.

To turn inward —
with reverence.

To sit with ourselves —
not in loneliness,
but in companionship.

For the soul is not waiting to be rescued…
…it is waiting to be remembered.

[Music resolves gently. A single bird call. Then silence.]

You saw a face in the flint, didn’t you?
Two sockets of sorrow, a slit for a mouth —
you stared and called it ghost or god.
But it’s limestone, chipped by frostbite and time.
Still, you felt it staring back.
Don’t flinch. That wasn’t madness.
It was memory playing charades with chance.

There’s a name for this
ritual of conjuring meaning from the meaningless:
Pareidolia.
The old cerebral trickster,
born of evolution’s anxious clockwork,
trained to spot the tiger in the tall grass,
and now spotting saints in toast.

Yes, you, with your clever cortex —
you are no less a primitive animal
when you see your dead gran
in the outline of a tea stain.
There is no sanctity in the splotch.
Only your synapses desperate for certainty.

Look at the moon.
Not with romance — with rigour.
Those are impact craters, not ancient eyes.
Yet poets and fools alike have sworn
they saw an old man weeping there,
some reckoning in the rock.
But he’s not there. Never was.

We see what we want,
or worse, what we fear.
Jesus in the wood grain.
A demon in the damp patch on the wall.
Whispers in the static,
like broken radios speaking truths.
But the noise is just that — noise.
We add the voice.

It’s not divine revelation.
It’s just apophenia’s softer cousin,
whispering comfort from chaos.
Making patterns of peril palatable.
Because we are pattern-hungry beasts.
We darn meaning where there is only fray.

Turner knew this.
In his storms, those apocalyptic skies,
you can almost glimpse
a veiled skull,

a bear,
a smirk in the sea spray,
figures rising from vapour,
not painted, but invoked.
He never confirmed it —
he let your imagination do the haunting.

Gainsborough,
elegant conjurer of sylvan dreams,
was no stranger to subversion.
In one soft-rendered landscape,
he slipped in what the critics
would not name aloud —
a penis, carved in bramble and bark,
not as jest, but as whisper.
A cipher for the carnal,
veiled by pastoral serenity.

You wouldn’t see it — not at first.
But stare long enough,
let your gaze drift through
the dappled light and dusky trees,
and it emerges:
not vulgar,
but vital —
like nature speaking in riddles.

Was it defiance?
A quiet rebellion against the polite gaze?
Or a challenge —
what will you see,
when you dare to look without blinking?

Even the ancients weren’t spared.
The Greeks saw gods in constellations —
Orion, not a random splatter of stars,
but a hunter forever mid-stride.
They sewed stories into the dark
so the heavens wouldn’t feel so silent.

Say what you will —
but the artist knows.
The poet knows.
Even the child staring at ceiling tiles
knows how to survive by seeing
what isn’t there.

But is that folly?
Or the only thing that makes life bearable?
Because if there is no face in the fire,
no figure in the fog,
then all we are left with is hush,
and the world becomes too loud in its vanity.

Hear this:
There are songs in the wind, yes —
but only if your ears bring the notes.
The murmurs in the kettle’s boil,
the speech in the whirr of streetlamps —
they are your loneliness,
begging to be sung back to.

And perhaps that’s the rub —
it’s not about seeing truth,
but the truth of our need to see.
A mirror for the mind’s illusions.
A trick — but one that tells us
where the cracks in our soul lie.

So next time you see
a weeping angel in your coffee foam,
don’t worship it.
But don’t dismiss it either.
Instead, say this:

“I know you are not real.
But I see you,
because I am real.
And that is enough.”

And walk on,
eyes wide,
knowing the world
wears your thoughts like a mask,
and sometimes the mask
smiles back.

The painting is The Fighting Téméraire, 1839, by Joseph Mallord William Turner.

It is a grievous yoke, this burden of borrowed blame—
a collar fastened not by hand but by suspicion’s iron whim.
Each time some wayward soul, bearing a surname that resonates mine,
trips the wires of wrong,
the whole damn nation tilts its gaze—
not toward justice, but toward us.

Us.
The dusky-skinned, the mosque-born,
the ones with crescent moons in names,
whose mothers prayed in tongues too foreign for prime-time comfort.
Suddenly, we are all summoned.
Summoned to the dock of national conscience
to account for sins we neither conjured nor condoned.

They demand an arena of shame—
lip-wrung condemnations,
flag-wrapped fealties,
a parade of disavowals
that must be louder, sharper, more breathless than before.
As though the volume of our denials might absolve us
of crimes not ours.

And I must speak, not softly but starkly:
I am no confessor for a stranger’s sins.
No tribunal sits above my brow.
I owe no one the hippodrome of guilt.
The sun rises without my bidding,
and so too do the madmen fall—without my nod.

I am Indian. Not as an addendum.
Not pencilled in the margin of someone else’s belonging.
But wholly, fiercely, undeniably so.
My veins carry the dust of Bhagat Singh,
the perspiration of Ambedkar,
the silence of every unmarked grave
that nationalism buried and forgot.

Do not ask me to audition
for a passport already inked in sacrifice.
Do not hand me the script of the apologetic native,
for I shall not read it.

Let this be clear as broken glass:
A man’s faith does not annul his rights.
A man’s skin does not tether him to another’s shadow.
Identity is not inherited crime.
It is forged—in thought, in constancy, in scars.

Let us speak, then, of unrest—
of the state that forgets its promise,
that stirs the pot of division
and calls it patriotism.
Of ministers with tongues forked
like colonial serpents,
charming the poor with gods and guns
while coffers burst unseen.

Let us not forget the riots fed on rumour,
the lynchings filmed for Facebook fame,
the laws tilted like bent scales
toward temples and terror.

In such an amphitheatre of control,
what madness to demand that we perform purity?

Enough.
Enough of this Pavlovian shame,
of being summoned to cry on cue,
to swear loyalty not to a land—
but to the lie that we do not already belong.

Do you not see?
The question is not whether we are Indian enough,
but whether this India remembers what that means.

So hear me now—
I am Indian in every breath I take,
every grave I’ll return to,
every injustice I’ll fight till my bones are ash.
I will not lower my voice
so others may raise their fears.

I will not apologise for my name,
nor for the noise it makes in narrow throats.

This land is mine—
not because I say so,
but because it is written in the soil,
in sweat, in struggle,
in the quiet, unmoving certainty
of those who stayed
even when the nation turned its back.

This is the beginning.
And that—regardless of your stare—
is also the end.

How strange and wondrous it is — that a phenomenon once held as the direst spectre haunting the chambers of political thought, should, with the passage of centuries, be reimagined not as a peril, but as a panacea for the world’s social afflictions.

From the contemplative heights of Plato’s Academy to the sober warnings of John Adams, wise men have long viewed revolution as a calamity — the very unravelling of the delicate fabric that binds a civilised society. For such men, the highest political artistry lay in forging constitutions of balance and moderation, instruments designed to temper the passions of mankind and guard against the tumults that revolutions unleash.

Yet in The Revolution to Come, Dan Edelstein leads us on a sweeping journey through the ages — from the sunlit agora of Greek antiquity to the storm-laden skies of Leninist Russia — tracing the curious transformation of this idea. The ancients, as Edelstein reminds us, saw history as a wild and wayward river, meandering without compass or destination, where revolutions signalled not hope, but disorder. This view held sway for centuries, until the Enlightenment dawned and cast its rational light upon the human story, reshaping the imagination of thinkers to see history not as a haphazard unfolding, but as a grand ascent toward progress — and revolution, once the enemy of order, as its very engine.

Put to trial amidst the fires of the French Revolution and canonised in the struggles of the modern age, this vision of revolution would offer nations a siren’s song of justice and renewal. And yet, as Edelstein so eloquently argues, the arrival of any revolution leaves societies not only changed, but often fractured and estranged, birthing new conflicts and hatreds beneath the banners of progress — as the faithful hunt the so-called counterrevolutionary with a zeal that seldom distinguishes between friend and foe.

This is no ordinary volume, but a panoramic meditation upon one of mankind’s oldest dilemmas: whether to prize stability over the allure of transformation, or to wager the peace of the present for the uncertain promises of tomorrow. In our own age — an age not unlike those shadowed by fear and upheaval — Edelstein’s work asks us, as all true philosophy must, to weigh the costs of the world we long for against the world we stand to lose.

No sugar on this tongue, mate.
Only ash and iron.
The tale’s older than supremacy, older than script,
etched into sandstone with the bones of the forgotten.

A tough case?
Call it what it is: an open wound.
A brutal ledger, autographed in the blood of men
who prayed eastward and spoke in tongues
your maps could not fathom.

There is no mistaking the pattern —
from Andalusia’s cathedrals repurposed,
to the sickly glow of Guantanamo’s cages,
from the Sykes-Picot lines drawn by gin-soaked hands,
to the drowned faces in the Aegean,
still clinging to the smell of home.

I have watched them shuffle in,
barefoot, broken-backed,
clutching nothing but the word ‘hope’ —
a word turned counterfeit
the moment it passed foreign lips.

They have stared down barrels,
felt boots on their necks,
and lived to count the microaggressions
that chip away at a man’s soul
quicker than any bullet.

The psychologist would call it ‘othering’,
the philosopher would call it ‘absurd’,
Kafka wrote it in code,
Camus wrapped it in smoke,
Orwell saw it, bled it, named it.

Muslims — an easy shorthand
for fear, suspicion,
a wildcard in the media’s deck.
Brown skin — your convenient silhouette
for terrorists, refugees, cockroaches, invaders,
depending on the decade.

London, Paris, Delhi, New York.
The skyline changes, but the cold shoulder remains.
Your streets, carved by colonisers,
still smell of the sweat of Muslim hands
who built them, unthanked.

We don’t ask for much, you know.
No thrones, no sceptres, no crowns.
Just a square of earth to call ours,
unspat upon.

Yet you treat us like relics,
museum pieces behind glass,
or worse: statistics.
Collateral in a war we didn’t declare.

You fear us,
because your history books taught you to.
Your Churchill, fat with imperial pride,
let Bengal starve as he lit cigars.
Your Kipling spun verses,
singing the ‘White Man’s Burden’
as Muslim corpses paved his kingdom’s roads.

And today?
The same old tune —
syllables stitched into soundbites:
‘radical’, ‘extremist’, ‘immigrant’.
When all we are is weary,
exhausted by centuries of suspicion.

A quiet racism,
the kind that does not shout but whispers.
In job interviews, in airports,
in the narrowed eyes of neighbours
who’ve lived next door for decades
but still call you ‘foreigner.’

We are not cattle, mate.
Nor your scapegoats, nor the unfeeling mountains
against which you hurl your inadequacies.

We breathe the same bitter air.
We bleed the same red.
Our prayers are not calls for conquest,
but quiet hopes to be left unmolested.

Emma Lazarus wrote of your golden door,
but it slammed shut long ago.
Now you build walls,
literal and psychological,
to keep us in check.

You, the majority,
the architects of borders and bullet points,
fear us.
Why?
Because to welcome us would be to admit
your systems were built on sand.

We ask only this:
Let the soil you claim as yours
recognise our footprints too.

History will judge you, as it judged Rome.
And the verdict will be cold.
Because you had the numbers,
the wealth, the power,
but lacked the humanity.

The question isn’t,
“Are we safe with you?”
It’s:
“Are you safe from the rot you’ve sown?”

For without the hands you vilify,
who builds your cities?
Without the backs you bend,
who shoulders your economy?
And without the hearts you break,
who tells your children
the world can be better than this?

So I stand here, in this grand courtroom of existence,
the defendant, the witness, the accuser, the victim.
And I ask, plainly:
Haven’t we been through enough?

We are not seeking charity,
just the decency owed to any human soul.
Not asylum,
but home.
Not tolerance,
but belonging.

If your scriptures, your constitutions,
your manifestos, your manifest destinies,
mean anything at all —
open the damned door.

Let the house you call civilisation
be more than just walls.
Let it be a hearth.
And let the fire warm all who gather,
without question.

For the world is tired.
And so are we.