I wear your garb
Speak your tongue
Eat your food
Live in your nation

Which wants my labour
But not my identity
Desires my sweat
But not my pain

Where should I go
For I have no country
Not in the real sense
Not even in the past tense

The nation of my birth
Where I am a foreigner
And the one I have adopted
Where I am an intruder

Where my customs
Are not your customs
My looks, not your looks
My god, not your god

Where I am looked upon merely
As an instrument of gain
Merely a tool of economics
Captive and well trained

A strange dichotomy
Where you want me, yet you don’t
Where my labour is desirable
And the rest all abhorrable

Perhaps my children will belong here
Treated as one amongst equals
Perhaps one morn not too distant
My people shall stand proud and tall

Subir Chakraborty / 18th July 2018