9/11 , 26/11 , 7/8 , X/Y , so on and so forth.....

“Where were you when history was made?”
The old TV punchline slept in my mind 
And woke up one fine day to ask me :
“where were you on 9/11
When the running story of our species was rudely silenced ?”

I was in my early teens,
in my shabby shorts,
a glorified refugee in my uncle’s house.
I was eating when the clippings came on air :
The impact, the collapse, the smoke, the chaos, the terror.
I hadn’t heard of the twin towers.
But the visuals took the taste away from my dinner.

It was the collapse that amused my cousin.
As the cement and glass shattered with a bang,
The toddler jumped and cheered and clapped his tiny hands.
Everyone laughed.

The sight stayed on in my mind, 
accompanied my future and soaked into my past.
My past , our past
The past of a generation bred upon
Guns ,bombs , Bonds and so on.
.
We are all cheering infants…..
We , who witnessed
“the war on terror”.
We , who sipped our morning tea
and read about 7/11, 8/11 and so on and so forth.

Two days back,
I glanced at The Hindu with sleepy eyes
And read about Assam blasts.
I jumped from the bed and ran,
For I didn’t want to miss my breakfast.

This work by Rakesh R is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 India License.