Bharat, Burma or Bengal,
All is our hoary past –
The glory of our shared history,
Religion, culture and customs.
We have divided –
Our houses and havelis,
Our families and fields,
Our parents and progeny
And our daughters and their dowries!

Our states and estates
Stood scattered
In divisions, sub-divisions
And fragmentations.
Narrow dark alleys
And zigzag lanes
Amidst our ancestral dwellings –
Contours of our celebrated geography!

All speak proudly
Of our intents and purposes
Since times afar –
No explanation and justification needed –
Mapping the labyrinths
Of our disgraced history,
Of our surrender and servitude
To invaders and traders,
Innumerable!
Today we chant,
Bravely and proudly,
Mera Bharat Mahaan!

1947 Partition is a subject fertile
With scholars and students alike.
Both are at pains
To achieve personal expansion
And academic growth.
They neither know nor feel
Pains and pangs, rapes and ravages,
Shame and disgrace,
Terror and trauma,
Of the gashes gaping
And wounds aching
With blood congealed
With the dust of Time
Over them.

Exodus largest!
The procession of strangers,
Stunned and benumbed,
Drowned in doings of destiny,
History leads through lands
Known and unknown,
With agonizing burdens and pains
Into the future blank,
Even today!

The darkest- ever tragedy
In human history,
Though its living witnesses
And their evidence of future
Have thrived and reached summits.
Still they express their aspirations strong
In People-to-People contact
And the like
To revisit the lands
Of their roots and clans
To be re-united!

We were divided
Among the British, the French
And the Portuguese.
And among ourselves!
So are we today
With all our regional imbalances!
Sharpening the edges of history
Our hates and intolerance
Are stronger than before.
Larger fears and terrors
Suppress our sense of revolt.

And the lines of division
Continue to be drawn
At bottom.

Thanks that
The sun, the skies, the stars and the spaces
Are still beyond us!
Perhaps divided we stand
And united we fall –
Chosen fate of us all !