Innocent Surrender

1

Their soft, supple and succulent fingers

Knot the ammunition to the cracker sticks

Passionately

But they know not the danger lurking behind

2

They excitedly wait for the forthcoming festival

Unaware of the imminent peril

Sealed in their world of joy, inside

A locked-up factory of fireworks, outside

3

They stuff, bind and count the Satans

Innocently ignorant of their demands

Initially, just one, a long grey stick to react

To the fires of human greedy act

Count continues and they come closer

4

Little sustenance, large workload

They tinge their old rags with the sweat

and stains of gunpowder

they make the fireworks more colourful

unmindful of the approaching greyness

5

They hoard the stocks into the byre

Oblivious that they made their own pyre

All the colours melted into one grey

All the acts and scenes ended in one play

6

They surrendered to the fireworks

Never to come back to see the festival

(Dedicated to all those innocent children who die in scores of numbers every year while making fireworks either for a festival or for someone’s death. Recently a large number of children died in the same activity in one of the factories in a south Indian State, whose details never reach our attention completely. And we got used to reading this, not going beyond the title of the news article. Dear readers, this is not a story of 18^th or 19^th century but happening even today.)