Subrat Mishra, Bhubaneswar, 6 May 2025
I. Afternoon
The valley wore a festive look.
Sunlight glinted on pine and snow.
Children laughed and chased each other.
Adults relaxed after a hard year’s grind.
A day so full of light and gaiety,
It seemed to have no room for sorrow.
But tragedy descended as it always does—
Sudden, unannounced.
Sons of darkness
Slunk between mountain folds,
Slithered through the jungle’s veins—
Not in shadows,
But under the bright eyes of the sun.
They came,
Guns in hand,
Questions on their lips.
“Your name?”
“Your God?”
One by one,
Men replied—
Some with pride,
Some with fear,
Some barely whispered.
Then—
A shot rang out.
Then another, and another.
Twenty-six men folded
Onto the grass
Beside pools of their own blood,
Eyes wide open with incredulous horror.
Twenty-six families ravaged.
A community ambushed.
A nation stunned.
They slaughtered—
Not in provocation,
Not in confusion,
But with the cold precision
Of belief turned blind.
They killed for a story
Someone fed them with fire—
A lie
In the shape of God.
II. The Mother
He said his name—
The one I whispered into his ear
Before he could speak,
Amid sacred chants
And the deep, spiralling hum of the conch shell.
He kept it like a prize.
He died for it.
They shot him—
Not for what he did,
But for how he prayed.
I ran as fast as I could.
But old mothers don’t outrun bullets.
They only find what’s left.
His body lay curled,
As if trying to return
To the safety of the womb.
The men who did this—
What faith do they speak of?
What faith wrecks a mother’s world
In wanton destruction?
You,
Who use God to inflame your hate—
May your nights be filled
With the eyes of the dead
Burning holes in your soul.
May your children ask you
What love means—
And your mouth
Fail to answer.
III. The Bride
I waited with a bowl of hot Maggi,
Steam rising like incense in the crisp mountain air.
He walked ahead,
Laughing,
Pointing at clouds that looked like
dancing yaks.
Then they came—
Not with greetings,
But with questions
Sharpened like knives.
They asked for his God
As if belief were a crime
Written on the forehead.
He answered.
With pride.
With peace.
And they turned his body
Into a warning.
I ran.
The grass was red.
His lips still shaped
The word “love.”
I felt his chest—
No rise.
The Maggi and his lifeless body
Went cold together,
Leaving the hush
Of a thousand futures unlived.
Since then,
I wear silence
Like a second veil.
To the men who kill for God—
You’ve smudged your scriptures
With the blood of innocents.
God does not ask
For widows.
Only heartless men do.
IV. The Daughter
He hoisted me
On his shoulders—
Said we’d race the wind.
I laughed, arms wide,
Sky touching my fingers.
Then the men arrived.
They didn’t ask for games,
Only names.
His voice didn’t shake
When he said ours.
Fire leapt from steel muzzles.
He fell—
Like a kite
Whose string was cut mid-flight.
I tumbled down with him—
Into silence.
His shoes pointed downhill,
Mud-spattered, still warm.
I hugged them
Because they were his.
The men looked past me
Like I was made of air.
But grief burns
Even in the hearts of children.
It turns lullabies
Into questions without answers.
And I hope their God
Never makes them sleep.
That he whispers
All our interrupted dreams
Into their ears
Until they understand
What it means
To break a child forever.
V. The Valley
I held them.
All twenty-six.
Each fall
Formed a big puddle on my green,
Made me aware that
Blood darkens quickly
On sunlit grass.
And the killers said they came for truth.
But truth doesn’t ask
For names
Before pulling the trigger.
They said they came for God.
But no God I know
Walks beside men
Who fire upon the unarmed living.
I watched them leave—
Their heavy boots,
Drumbeats of dread and anguish
Upon my heart.
They spoke no remorse.
Only the grammar of loathing.
What faith twists a man
To kneel in prayer
After murder?
No God is guilty here.
Only men—
Men who live and die by hate,
Calling it God.
I hold the dead close,
But not their killers.
They shall not be named in my winds,
Nor forgiven by my meadows.
Let history bury them
In the same silence they forced upon others.
Let their lies rot and fester,
To gangrene their souls.
And let the world remember—
No God walked with them that day.
