Walking down,
Sound of shoes loud against the ground,
In-spite of the noisy street.
Skepticism – fear – stares – crowd ...
Fists clenched, eyes roving from left to right ...
It wasn’t an alien place; sharp featured faces, human smell, busy market ...
And yet, yet the fear, seated deep inside.
Beggars on the floor, people brushing past.
Shops on both sides, people buying fast.
And then, as we went up the stairs, fear spilled out,
-- just one random push, a shout, and a loud swear ...
...
.....
.......
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Scare, fear; harbinger of human fight, of omnipresent tension,
The scared, the afraid, fight ... only they fight.
And there, then, i saw it for myself...
MY fear broke out in tears,
Burst out,
...OUT of years of being told about the coexisting religions,
And the fight within that very coexistence,
Ironically fuelling each other- the fight and the coexistence.
Fear that is bred since childhood,
With indifference and no real knowledge of the ‘people’,
Ironically, the religion becoming more important than those ‘people’...
A fight goes on in my mind, to date;
Are they, pathways to peace, or pathways of fear ...
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This was written just after my visit to a famous mosque, after dark one evening. I was reluctant to go, for the fear was surfacing at the mere mention of the name of the place. But we (my family and me) eventually did go. These were words i hurriedly wrote a few moments after the pathway to the mosque had ended to give way to the leading stairs. What happened in those moments, is history. But the fight, as always, remains.....
