By Divya Ramachandran
What was it called?
An Operation.
Operation Sindoor.
Red.
As red as the powder a woman wears on her hair,
As red as a bindi on her forehead,
Right at the centre parting of the hair—
Parting.
Parting.
PARTING.
A strong word that could be defined indefinitely.
What does this parting mean?
Is it a parting between love and war?
Parting between good and evil?
Parting between wrath and warmth?
Parting between life and death?
Maybe it is a parting between restraint and rage.
A parting between fear and the power to overcome?
A parting between the living and the dead?
ZOOM! The missiles flew seamlessly and quietly,
Zipping through the air, like the wind.
Heavy yet light,
Strong yet burdened,
Attacking yet precarious.
The silent weight of revenge,
Maybe like a woman who no longer waits at the window?
Waiting.
Watching.
Waiting.
Watching.
Waiting.
Watching.
Would you fight back?
Tell me, would you fight back?
What does it mean, this color red?
Is it a nonchalant whisper of a morning deed?
Is it the weight of something untold or held back?
Is it a drape of something being long-held within?
Is it the promise of some sort of merging or union?
Or the mourning of it?
BOOM! They say the land was wiped clean—
No civilians, no mistake.
Was it a mistake?
Do some see it as a mistake?
Maybe it was.
No rain falls without feeding the soil,
No fire leaves roots untouched.
Wars are waged, people disappear, and people are displaced.
Why do we still do this?
Do we colour our foreheads
to remember life,
or to honor the blood that life demands from us at crossroads?
Or for some sort of martyrdom?
We have all seen enough red.
In roses, in sarees, in lamps, in fire,
In prayer threads we have on our necks and hold in our hands,
In sunsets that vanish into the ocean.
Tell me,
is a border still a home
when marked by wrath, by fire, by rage, by nemesis, by red?
Is a strike still just when it carries the name of something once sacred?
So, would you fight back?
Tell me, would you fight back?
Sindoor,
a sign of belonging.
This operation,
a claim.
But who belongs, and to what?
No mother asked for this.
No mountain did either.
And yet they watch,
as always,
while the red dust settles.
So tell me, would you fight back?