When We Strip Ourselves Naked, Down to Our Very Souls, Is This What I am to You?

At what point will you say enough is enough?

What will it take for you to declare the life of a bovine cannot be equal to that of my father or brother or son?

How do you not see the terror you unleash when you support a narcissistic megalomaniac who thinks nothing of using your creator to kill, rape and destroy? All in your name? In the name of the God you claim to worship?

How do you look me in the eye and tell me this is okay?

This parallel universe where we visit each other, eat together, our families so intertwined, we don’t know where mine begins and yours ends?

How is it that you do not see? How is it that you do not care? How is this okay?

Who am I to you?

Who are you?

I ask myself this, not aloud but in my head, countless times,
as I sit at your table and you sit at my mine

Until I don’t.

And I know, the moment the words have left my mouth

We will never be the same again

Our relationship now tattered and bloody and broken

Much like the innocent on the news, their lives shattered, their homes destroyed, brought to their knees

Victims to a new vicious dawn they did not see coming

At the hands of murderous violent ruthless mobs that you unshackle and pretend do not exist when we are in each other’s presence

How is this possible?

This dissonance? This inconsistency?

Do you not see this? Are you blinded? Or Is it because you choose to
look away?

Or is the collateral damage worth the shining new India you dream of?
Rid of all the impurities, you conjure up in your head

Or is it that you, my friend, have become satanic putty fashioned by words of hate and seeds of distrust?

Or is it even more shallow than that? Because you and I worship a different God?

Is this what we have come to?

When we strip ourselves naked, down to our very souls

Is this what I am to you?

Someone that can be discarded, abandoned, sacrificed because of who I bow to?

So tell me when will this stop? When will you stop it?

Because your silence is not an option

Your complicity is not an option

Your ignorance is not an option

Our friendship, my dearest friend, is no longer an option

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Farah Adil is a Chicago-based freelance writer who believes dissent is patriotic, that terrorism, in any form, is abhorrent and that, we the people, can effect change if we want it badly enough. In a past life, Farah was a journalist with New Delhi Television and Times Now. She currently writes to make a point because sitting ringside and watching is just not her cup of tea.