In a country that never stopped learning
the ethics of slavery,
we call what was once survival
ambition.
There is more opinion than education,
and yet we wonder
why governments keep failing us.
We wail about a dying democracy
because it no longer benefits us
befittingly enough,
and for the self-proclaimed elites,
the crème de la crème,
that is apparently worth waging wars over.
We work for people
who work for people
who work for people,
for a monthly allowance
we dare to call financial freedom,
then scream our lungs out
in dim-lit bars
about equality being our birthright
and hierarchy
a capitalist conspiracy.
We live capitalist lives
while preaching everything but capitalism,
and depending on which side
of the fallacy you're standing on:
religion as an act of faith
or intellect as its currency,
you're either the right
or the left.
However much you plead otherwise,
the choice was made
before you arrived.
The left insists on being called intellectual
while abhorring labels,
identities, definitions,
and every other grammar
that becomes inconvenient that day.
The right is rather keener
on taking your food,
your land,
your tongue,
your faith,
and eventually
your definition of a life worth living.
The difference is simple:
the right is united
in its uncouthness,
its barbarism,
its certainty;
the left
can never seem to agree
on what is left
and what is not.
And yet,
for the better part of the last half-decade,
both have had
a common currency.
Umar Khalid.
The left pulls him out of the hat
like a rabbit
whenever it needs to win an argument
against the left.
I know you were expecting
left against right,
but the right doesn't believe
in conversations
that aren't monologues.
The right reserves him
for another purpose:
a cautionary tale
for anyone who mistakes
a democracy
for permission to question the government.
I'm not going to waste words
cataloguing the right's failures:
the ever falling rupee,
the whenever falling bridges,
and the never-falling appetite
for trading people
for cheaper than cows.
But then, mothers have always sold
greater stakes than children
in this country,
haven't they?
But Umar Khalid
isn't really about Umar Khalid.
The left uses him
the way Umar Khalid wishes
he could use a get-out-of-jail card:
whenever,
wherever,
against whosoever.
It lays siege to his name
as though it owns him,
then comes out wearing his face
on fabric,
linen,
paper,
plastic.
But
Umar Khalid refuses
to remain symbolic.
Because how long
can you defend an idea
without knowing
the skin of it?
So the argument moves.
From him
to Kashmir.
From Kashmir
to Gaza.
From Gaza
to Jews.
And the farther it travels
from the country
that produced the argument,
the louder the confidence becomes.
Because opinions are important.
Context is negotiable.
And staying out of jail
is non-negotiable.
Perhaps that is the great joke
of our politics:
the right turns people
into warnings,
the left turns them
into arguments,
and both forget
that people are neither.
If intellect were currency,
the left would have Umar Khalid
on the rupee.
Because that is the only way
we seem to know
how to value a revolution:
by printing them
on the side
we have already chosen.
