Martyrs Make Memorable Merchandise

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.