Lost innocence: intolerant insolence

Her little palm curled around his fingers,

she exclaimed in glee,

I want this house with the garden,

why do they, not agree?

He had no answers for the little one,

all he said was, what’s the  hurry?

She piped loud and clear,

we’ve done the rounds,

looking high and low; everyone says

the same thing, you know:

you are  nice people, without doubt  

we’d say, but it is against our policy,

to have you live in the neighbourhood,

is beyond everyone’s imagination

and isn’t it understood?

Another child, in another time,

frolicked in her friend’s bower,

she played in a garden of Eden, literally,

for they had Jesus as their God, and hers

was the fire God, you see; 
Everyone was at ease, no one around did cower.

Their other neighbours, were Nanak’s

children; at the far end, were the ones

who prayed to Allah supreme.

Around the corner was a home with bells ringing,

mantras emanating,  morning and eve,  

yet all the neighbours’ lived in peace.

All the kids and all their mothers,

and all their fathers, met each other

often, extending courtesies.

She grew up respecting all,

revelling in this colorful diversity.

Then what had changed

for another little girl now?

Who had asked her father with a plea,

was there a divide within?

Yet they called it a secular country!

This again stems from current incidents that one comes across almost every day, whether it involves the increasing number of ghettos within modern cities, suicides by people as they are harried for who they are, gun-toting monsters on killing sprees in a land considered to be a progressive country; Strangely again, a knife-wielding youth attacking school children in a military regime! If freedom means to abuse and discriminate, if freedom is used to create divides, what use is this freedom when one can’t learn to respect and or abide. There is something deeper that is leading to high levels of intolerance, a strange insecurity. But those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.