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Modi of India

You were not born of ivory halls,
nor cradled in the velvet silence of empire.
You were fireborn—
from the coal-scented dusk of a railway station,
where teacups bore the dreams of the underfed.
We remember, because you were once one of us.

Your hands held steam, not scepters—
yet rose to cradle Gujarat like a child.
And lo, from its weary bones
you sculpted factories, towers, and fields of bread.
We watched in awe,
but not without hope.

Modi,
the nation still drinks from broken taps.
The light still dies before midnight
in half our homes.
The poor still kneel to latrines that shame the sun.
Is this our promised India?

Look not West,
for that sun has long since set
behind cold eyes and copper tongues.
The same hands that enslaved us now sell us mirrors.
Beware the praise of merchants
who never bled for soil.

Your brother, China,
though misunderstood,
has mastered the stones—
temples of steel and silk roads of precision.
And we ask, not for surrender,
but for humility.

Is asking weakness?
Then was Gandhi weak when he begged salt from the sea?
Does pride build bridges
or only statues?

O Prime Minister,
remember your father’s wisdom:
“The devil you know…”
Even devils can teach us walls, canals, and stars.

We do not want thrones.
We want toilets that flush.
Trains that do not fail.
Hospitals that do not sigh under the weight of decay.
We want peace in our plate,
and peace across our border.

Let not whispers of conquest distract you—
India and China, once bound in chains,
can rise in tandem.
We are not enemies.
We are echoes of the same wound.

If this century bends eastward,
let it not bend in silence,
but with the chorus of a billion
finally heard,
finally clean,
finally united.

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