Hot Hot Place

India is now a hot hot place
In more ways than you know;
The sun bears down from above,
And Hindutva bubbles from below.

There is little inbetween—
Just despair or elation;
Some the heat incinerates,
Others like a hot hot nation.

The power and the glory now embrace
In fifty centigrade;
The sun and the politician coalesce
To enact a blistering raid

On the laidback lovers of liberty
Inimical to heat and passion;
These temperate malingerers are in truth
Enemies of a hot hot nation.

What country that was not truly hot
Did ever rule the universe?
Where the sun failed them the continentals
Made up with the heat of religion, race.

Think that we now have both of these,
So what country may escape
The searing destiny of heat
That we will spread from cape to cape.

So, let the sun incinerate
Our effete liberal soul;
Hindutva will join with it
To make the nation a fireball.

After millennia of slavery
Bharat will firm up and raise
The enfeebled and the rational-cool
In a world-historical spiritual blaze.

Badri Raina