India shining

The sun is shining with the noon’s full roar
Sipping my every blood and even more
Hard hit with ‘India shining’,
I met this girl, India’s lost child
Lost in the slums, never comes to school.
Lost in the roads selling flowers to the
Known Indians, the elite class, the shining Indians

Oh! How innocent she is!!
With those lovely cheeks
Which invite a kiss or two.
Little bubbly she is,
Her face covered
With the dust of cars and
increasing pollution levels.
A small piece of cotton,
She clothed herself.
I wonder if I find so many stitches elsewhere.

Surely, India is shining
With its precious pearls on rags
It is shining even brighter.

There she is,
How old she may be?
Six! Or may be eight!!
The time when
I was still in my dad’s lap.
There stands she,
Uncared and avoided,
among the same class of innocent souls.
If hell could come to earth
It would be their lives.

Unknown I am, she gave me a stare
Passed me looking back with eyes so weared
She’s the same girl we see each day
Robbed off their childhood,
Ripped off their lives.

They may drive another lantern,
which can add an extra ray
to shine India brighter. Or,
they may put India up
in the world map of crime.

Innocent they are.
No good, no bad.
Tiny heads they have.
(tough to realize)
what is good, what is bad.

Lift them up
“children are the future of the nation”
The same lines roared
again and again
In every public meeting
In every election manifesto
by the man coming in.
by the man going out.

Lift them up
They aren’t few
Start it soon,
Else they’ll take to crime
Oh! Mighty think tanks,
Gear your brains.