Moon at Half Past Noon

A single thud, a tear of noise that ripped the morning’s prayer.
A taste of metal, sudden smoke, that fouled the tender air.
Then, falling, slow, from warmth and light to cool and shadowed stone,
A bloom of crimson, deep and slow, on cloth I called my own.
The world, a wash of gasps and sky, of footsteps running near,
And two last words, “Hey Ram,” to bridge the ending and the fear.

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And if my spirit could now pause, to weigh this violent close,
To read the message in the pain, the truth the bullet shows,
I would not curse the hand that fired, but in its grim release,
Find a question for my own soul, begging for its peace:
“Was this the final, fitting price for all I tried to build?
Was the preacher, in the end, by his own silence killed?
Was I the Ravana they felled, my own ten-headed crown
The very evils I denounced, that pulled my spirit down?”

So let me walk the halls of my atonement, stark and steep,
And weigh the substance of my failings, all the promises I keep.

A Shadow of Pride (Abhiman), that would not be denied.
To think my Satya (Truth) was the only path that all must tread,
A quiet arrogance, disguised in simple, homespun thread.

The Hollow in my Home (Ghar), the love I left to bare.
My vows were strict, my purpose high, a noble, costly price,
But did my Brahmacharya (celibacy) starve an ordinary slice of life?

The Weight of my own Will, my fasts that could enthrall.
But was it soul-force, Satyagraha, or a chain I made for hearts?
A love that lifts, or a demand that tears the world apart?

The Scar I Could Not Heal, the ancient poison of caste.
Did I speak enough for those who lived beneath the wheel?
Or was my fight against this Adharma (injustice) not quite real?

The Cage of my own Rules, my focus on the spin.
This fierce, inner war for purity, these self-created schools,
Did it make me less able to hear the world’s bewildered fools?

The Dream that was too Fragile, the quiet, gentle village.
Against the roar of progress, it seemed a wistful spillage,
An echo of a purer time, outmatched by the new age.

The Ghost of the River of Blood, the Partition’s flood.
My soul cried “Shanti!” (Peace), but could I turn the tide?
This failure is the heaviest chain, the grief I carry inside.

The Mask of the “Mahatma”, a giant’s vast panorama.
Did this statue that I became, so grand and so alone,
Dwarf the small, good struggles of others, trying to grow their own?

My Grip on the Future, my Ram Rajya (Ideal Kingdom), a fixed sculpture.
To cling so to a single dream, is that not its own fracture?
A refusal to let life simply be, in its wild, untamed pageant?

My Greatest Love, my Method (Ahimsa), my sole and steadfast lex.
But was it meant for empires, or for a single soul’s context?
Can a nation’s raw, justified anger be held in such a complex?

So, was I then the Ravana, whose death this day has come?
A demon felled by a brother’s hand, a necessary sum?
The bullet asked. I answer now: Perhaps a part was true.
The battle is not ‘out there,’ but in me, and in you.

My life was not perfection, but the fight—the constant strain
To slay these ten, and twenty more, through joy and searing pain.
The true Dussehra is not one day, it is the lifelong war,
To hear “Hey Ram” upon your lips when you can fight no more.