A Sigh of Returning Officer

By Dharmanshu Vaidya

Every election duty has many sessions.
I was returning from my nocturnal adventure.
And all of a sudden
I was confronted by
Ancient sages of the synthetic past.
I was stopped and grabbed by the neck-
“You, why do you write about those silly facts?”
Well, I was alone and a little scared
Hence it sounded like a gravestone.
Hearing nothing, they’re taken aback,
Since they wanted to have a few words.
You see,
people nowadays demand testimony,
But that was a different time.
You need two to three words and it would be just,
To prove someone’s guilty of anti-national madness.
Finally, I bowed with a weird sense.
They whispered and then left me alone
With a word of advice
not to write
anything but an ode
Full of possibilities and divine complexity.
The last of them shouted after going a little far,
‘Writing of such nature could bring accolades of national pride.’
I was bemused but somewhat relaxed,
For breath was safe, but the will was in a mess.


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