My God died

I just finished a very disturbing book called 'Riot after Riot'. A collection of essays describing the major communal conflagrations in the country since the 1970s. Written by the eminent journalist M.J Akbar, the book is beautiful in language and raw in what the language expresses. I was shaken, rather I still am. The poem is an aftermath of this reading experience.

It was just a book, non-fiction
picked up, to satisfy a reading addiction,
my hands ran red, blood clotted and fresh
and the glue smelt - of rotting flesh.


scalding phrases of deliberate fires,
revealing truths of diabolical liars,
swords,knives,spears,stones, guns,
dead parents, killed children, raped nuns,

kerosene,LPG, moltovs, en masse rage
a murder book - page by page
a million answers for why a man dies,
the only weapon always used - lies.

there are idols,or there are none,
they read the namaaz, I sing a bhajan,
but religion is just a clever decoy,
the reverred scapegoat, the indicting ploy

hatered is cleverly festered,
wounds made, irritatingly pestered,
people killed, with a random roll of dice
a bigger move, a pawn sacrifice

halfway through and my belief crumbled,
asked about my opinion - mumbled,
a few more pages and I was in a daze,
lifelong convictions, lost in a bloody haze,

I knew the truth, at the revelation I cried,
I've always judged, but now I didn't know my side
I am guilty of having a religion,
I am guilty of belonging to a region

Riot after Riot, the wounds would never go,
I wanted the truth, but never so,
I want to unlearn, unread, I tried,
'twas, 6th of December,my god died.