Mahatma! Thou Shall Be Living This Hour!

Mahatma! Thou shall be living this hour
So do you understand the need of the hour.
We beckon a fiercest battle every year
So come the troubles near
Divide the minds so dear.

Mahatma! Thou shall come alive with flesh and blood
Thou shall see the world much democratised!
A century of countries freed
A new nation is born every half a decade.
Not only of struggle and deed
From the clutches of the colonial throbbing
Exploitation of the reform Maneuvering
But of the creed that we swallowed
This was the time's demand.
And the freedom that has come has come
With all the elements that are troublesome.
Freedom was possible, if not achieved fully
Equality and equity are alluring, elusive.
Thine India forged ahead
Amidst a billion problems facing ahead.
While we salute Thee on 2nd October* and 30th January**.
We never forget the Last, who you loved unto the last,
Who in realism lost the very gene of life.
We never forget him.
We strive to keep him till the last.
So, the need would arise to serve him.
As we 'celebrate' Martyr's Day
Amidst us are there your killers.
What a realization paying homage to Thee
As their ideology changed along with time
Now for them, you are a son, not the father of the land.
As you came late to their land
Thousands of years after Buddha.
You are fortunate to die a blissful death.
Not to witness your land
In the hands of the 'modern builders' of the nation
And the new ideologues
Like the camouflaged foxes among the goats.
"You would not have died a more glorious death than this"
Said a philosopher of philosophers.
While you glorified Death and sanctified the Leveller
We glorified ourselves to power.

Mahatma! Thou shall be living this hour
Or we shall be dying!
Had you not taught us the means to fight
We would have got our freedom from the colonial power
But not from bloodshed, hatred, bias
Where fathers bury their sons
Mother witness their daughter’s modesty robbed.
Mahatma! Thou shall be living this hour
Or, we shall be dying!

* Gandhi’s Birth Date
** Gandhi’s Martyrdom day