#DeRegisterMe
From your patriot games
I won’t stand and sing
No anthem again.
De-register me
From all your national spaces
Statues and sign-boards
And shout-out-loud places.
My birth in this country
Is an accident.
I didn’t dial heaven
For Veg McPuff Instant.
I didn’t say
Hello ‘#1947
Hindus only please
To New National Haven.’
Too busy to read? Listen to it instead.
I didn’t say
How I will eat
Or what
Nor where nor how
I will f#$%
Or not.
It’s bad enough
I can’t swear —
Without symbols.
And walk with fear
Light-footed
Nimble.
I write with trepidation
Slow and absurd.
To minimize your trolls
And their abominable turds.
I didn’t say
‘Dear God
Please make me Indian.
Not French or Italian
Or Rhodesian’.
Accidents are collisions.
Out of our control.
Mine was
So was yours
No national scroll.
That called you up at birth
Dialled the clouds and said.
‘One bigot please.
Lion-sized head.’
I won’t sing no song
Or celebrate a day.
Independence is that too
And I will have my say.
|Take me off right now
De-everything me alright?
Use everything you’ve got
It still won’t set it right.
The holes you have blown
The lies you repeat
I will toss into the abyss
I will banish your tweets.
I am not proud of my Indian-ness
You’ve made me ashamed
To call this Lynchistan mine,
To give it my name.
I am not a patriot
Nor need to be.
I was born here that’s all
So de-register me.
(Revati Laul is a Delhi-based journalist and film-maker, and the author of ‘The Anatomy of Hate’, forthcoming from Context /Westland in November 2018. She tweets at @RevatiLaul. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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