Don't remember when I started reading the newspaper backwards,
starting from the sports page.

Must have been long ago,
when I stopped listening to the breaking news on TV.

Farmers mistaking pesticides for their food,
hanging themselves on the trees, they once planted.

Rapes of minors, gang rapes, **** and ******,
crimes, violence, arson on the basis of caste, creed and religion.

Just because of being born in a different home,
to parents who go to a different place of worship.

An irate mob can do anything it perceives right,
Lynch a beef eater,

or brutally beat up a doctor ,
who could not guarantee a result.

How long ? How long should we,
insulate ourselves from such acts of shame ?

How long can we pretend
not to see, not to hear,

or even not to comprehend
the magnitude of darkness in our society?

Till the darkness reaches us ?
Wouldn't it be late then ?

Peering at the first page of newspaper,
I wonder, how long ?