We Live, But With No Existence Poem by Bashyam Narayanan

We live, but with no existence

We belong to a land
Beautiful and bestowed with
All wonderful natural resources
A very cool mountainous land is ours
It drew attention of
Many saints in the past
Previous millennium saw
A number of great sages
Staying in our land
Discovered new spiritual understanding
And established institutions
For enhancing the path of enlightenment
The terrain invited a lot of tourists
Because of its snow laden landscape
And its vegetation less common
In other parts of our country
We took pride of being part of this land
And belonging to a much visited place
Things started changing over a period of time
In the last two decades or more
We, belonging to particular community,
Were chased out of the land
Because we were minority
And forced into the other part of the State
For no mistake of ours
Many lost their lives
Many lost their families
Many lost their parents
Many lost their sons and daughters
Many lost their brothers and sisters
Many lost their homes
But all lost our identities
Our governance has not
Worried about us for the simple reason
That we stood this storm and managed
To survive and that
We are too little in the greatest democracy
To decide the fate of any governance
We cry within
As we are left to stay
As a refugee in our own land
With no real belonging
Away from a soil that once was
Our mother land
We live, but with no existence