News
- Hashtag Kalakar
- May 19, 2024
- 1 min read
Updated: Oct 2, 2024
By Paramjit Singh Bakhshi
A fourteen-year-old rape victim commits suicide, shocked
That her parents proposed a compromise with the accused.
And next to it the news
A groom who never learnt to drive runs over a few
On his wedding night with the car that is part of his dowry.
An old politician shoots himself unable to handle shame
Or prove his innocence. The accuser his own daughter in law
Seeking divorce, testifies he molested her daughter.
Elsewhere in Kashmir, a terrorist kills a TV artiste
Because acting and singing is against the Quran.
Closer home an acquaintance’s dying declaration
Upon his suicide has a missionary behind bars.
This is The Times of India on this day of May
Yet this is not all it has to say.
The days are still so bloody in Texas an eighteen-year-old
Shoots nineteen children, two adults,
Casualties continue to mount.in the Russia-Ukraine war.
The price of crude reaches level obscene.
China is upset with Quad, neighboring nations seek IMF bailout,
Markets are up one day and down the very next one
Are we naturally immoral, or just confused,
Everybody’s road map at odds with another’s
Our anxiety to survive overpowering all sense.
We are supposedly intelligent but still dense.
I blocked out the TV channels, I need my peace of mind,
And now from today will survive on zero news feed.
Somebody said truth is stranger than fiction
But somehow the latter because untrue
Somewhat more palatable
By Paramjit Singh Bakhshi

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