माहौल ख़राब है

Rumours could be heard in West Delhi – a riot was coming. Hamid approached Vijayant, his employer, and said, “My landlord has asked me to vacate. I have to go back to my village in Bihar. The times are bad.”

A moment, Hamid’s request inspired a poem that explores the relationship between a Hindu employer and his family with their Muslim driver; it explores the banalities of the everyday that sutured their lives together now torn at by a tide of hate that seeks to divide.

Hamid needs to go home because the times are bad. Will the times stop being bad if Hamid goes home, Vijayant wonders. What will it take for times to stop being bad? Perhaps that is the question the poem leaves us, the readers, with – a responsibility.

A light of solidarity, of a human connection rooted in sharing lives, far beyond the barriers of religion, shines through the poem dispelling the enclosing darkness, for a moment. Poetry as a refuge, poetry as hope, and the empathy of a nine-year old child who hasn’t been taught to hate: Myra, Vijayant’s daughter, asks her father, “Papa, will Hamid bhai never come back?”

To us, even in such “bad” times, little Myra pushes us to think. She gives us a ray of hope as questioning is important and it is the new generation that must decide where the answer should lie.

(Introduction by HAQ: Centre for Child Rights)

माहौल ख़राब है

Vijayant Kohli

5 साल से हामिद मुझे दफ़्तर ले जाता है,

एक दिन अचानक शाम को मेरे पास आता है,

कहता है, गाँव जाना है, माहौल ख़राब है।

हामिद मेरी माँ को गुरुद्वारे ले जाता है,

मेरी पत्नी को मंदिर ले कर जाता है,

मेरी बेटी मायरा को स्कूल से लाता है,

एक दिन अचानक शाम को मेरे पास आता है,

कहता है, गाँव जाना है, माहौल ख़राब है।

हामिद मेरे पापा की दवाई लाता है,