What is life?

Is my life or your life, is life?

Or what throbs between us, is life?

Are the people around us living?

Are they living because we see them moving,

Eating, drinking, walking, talking

Fighting, loving or… even thinking

Is that considered life?

For a businessman producing a good product is life

For a worker, working sincerely is life

For doctors saving patient’s life is life

For patients following doctor’s advice is life

For teachers educating young is life

For students learning from teacher is life

For soldiers fighting with enemy is life

For citizens being alert is life

For a baby-sitter caring is life

For rich and powerful being kind to weaker is life

For farmers producing for the nation is life

But are all these living doing,

What they are supposed to be doing

Or they are merely walking and talking

Six men rape a 25 year old student

Three men rape a 15 year old in a car

A politician and his forty cronies rape a young girl for months

Girls in a home for handicapped raped

Fifteen year old raped

Twelve year old raped

Ten years old raped

Seven years old raped

Five years old…

Crowd protests against unceasing rapes

Police officer slaps a protesting girl

Minister says watch TV at night for population control

A minister tells farmers to urinate

And irrigate their fields

One group burns down another in a train

Starting a long retaliatory killing chain

No one is there to do anything

Stop anything

I think no one here is living

I guess the buck stops with me

All this ends with me

It ends with my end

I am also dying

Dying, because I am thinking

We all are dead

Dead nations

Dead priests

Dead faiths

In a dead world