Paint Me Colourless

I went about my daily chores,

Some trivial destination-bound,

When I found some colours, lying around,

All from which I had to pick just one.

At first, when I chose the colour green,

They told me I was pro-Muslim,

They told me I was not Indian,

And taken aback, I retraced my steps,

And zeroed in on blue this time.

But they said that blue was inhuman,

It did signify the lifeless numbness,

Of a lonely corpse in a chilly morgue.

Perplexed, by now, I chose saffron,

But still they said, they were insulted,

For orange signified violence and wrath,

And Hindu faith in its extremity.

Now I, baffled, did pick yellow,

But this didn’t do any better to them,

They complained it was filth that I,

had advocated by choosing this colour.

So I went back, with trembling hands,

And decided on the colour red,

But no, they weren’t pleased at all,

For in their contrived, twisted eyes,

All that red hue could ever mean,

Was blood, thick blood, spilt without reason,

And passion so vast, it destroyed lives,

‘Oh no’, they said, ‘unacceptable’.

And now they warned me, one last time,

To pick a colour of their sanction.

Out of ideas and out of luck,

I went ahead and chose all colours.

But lo, behold, they did not budge,

They put their heads together once more,

And after maybe, a moment’s thought,

They opposed me, unanimously.

They said I was too diplomatic,

I’d tried to act smart, to wiggle through.

They accused me of appeasement,

And condemned me to punishment.

-Bharat M.