If

If I believe in memories ingrained in my soul, I will believe in a thread that binds me to the smell of faraway lands.

If I believe in my dreams, I will accept that I have already seen a place I have not  been to yet.

If only I will let myself believe, I will hear myself sigh and accept the only time I inhaled life was when I heard a voice that I realized, after a while, was mine.

"There you are." I said to the land, the mountains, like it was a person. And home.

"Finally." The land said, like it knew I could hear.

Like it knew me.

Knew more.

Remembered more.

Of course, it remembers more.

If I believed the sneers of those who like noises and lights and politics, I will not believe in most things that matter. And bring small joys.

If I believed in their beliefs, their steady and stubborn flow of hatred, I will lose me.

If I would let it, the blur of images will separate itself from the ordinary thought, that what haunts my sleeping hours is not something I have seen in books or elsewhere.

But I disappoint the legacy of what is etched on my being. And the dreams never become vivid memories. Always running colors. Always just an inch away from my fingertips.

When for a second I believe in the tiny impossible whisper, I realize I am constantly searching. What and who? Where and when?

Why am I always open to leftover energies of long gone spirits and times? Did I hear noises in the doorways of several structures standing old and timeless? Why was it more soothing than spooky? Of course I didn't hear anything.

But of course I did.

Did I feel something in the Mughal Gardens? One wisp of sad wind. Of course, it was humidity. Then why did my smile fade from the thick sadness that washed over me, in a gush of breeze?

I am waiting for myself first, To stop denying.

If I believe in the rhythm of my heartbeat maybe I will remember clearly what the contours of a face mean to me.

Maybe I will stop searching.

Maybe. 

That song, again.

I have been listening to this song since I was a child.

My mother never liked this song. So it wasn't played in my house. We didn't know the tune, nor the lyrics.

We didn't like this genre of music.

And suddenly in 1992, the song was playing everywhere.

It played in the middle of the night, and grew louder and louder like a mob was stalking near.

It played and played for nearly 2 months. And started seeping inside my head.

When I wasn't scared, I hoped it would play on so the schools will remained closed.

When the schools re-opened, my teachers asked all of us our opinions on what should be made on a far away land that was sending waves of tremors all across the country.

I said - A school would be good. Like mine. Where all of us play in the tall grass and chase yellow butterflies in rains and blow smoke in the winter winds.

My opinion was published. I read my name, my age with my religion beside it in the newspaper for the first time.

And I heard the same song, as if chanted in crazy murmurs. It sent shivers down my spine.

I started hating this song.

I grew up and the hatred grew.

I went into a phase of denial. The song doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. It must not exist. It doesn't matter.

It died down. Or I had hoped.

Then, suddenly, it infested my ears in 2002.

I started hearing it behind my back. Faint wafts of it. The stink in it. It was old and rotten.

But never did it die. the sound of it.

What do you eat, what do you wear, which is your favorite cricket team, what are your political views on issues. The lyrics changed. But the song was the same.

The song has never stopped playing.

"Hindu - Muslim - Hindu - Muslim - Hindu - Muslim - Hindu - Muslim."