Little Avril sat by the windowsill,
Watching the goods load amidst
The tunnels of an underground mill.
She lived with her old granny,
Who had heard years after years
The song of the golden Indian canary.

As the teen saw the loads pass by
What she wondered, would bring tears to all eyes.
She asked her grandma, "Granny! is the present day as beautiful as the 10's you described?
Those beautiful beaches, vibrant skies?"

Alas! It was a dreadful site,
The teen asked the question with a twinkling in her eyes.
Sad to say, cancer had made her blind.
Blind enough to ignore the hearts that left sweetness of childhood in such a torn state
But, only her granny knew, in sadness beshrewn
What was the faded past,
And her grandchild's future fate.

Granny was stagnant,
With glistening eyes
That were really to unfold to Avril, a painful lie.
"Dear child, you know I'm old
Old enough to tell you stories untold.
Old enough to describe the heaven anigh,
That has turned today into a wretched three-fold.

What's being described, isn't in any book old or new,
Rather it's like the marble edict, Inscribed with hopes and success dreams
Which the people of this country never knew.

Dearie, it was a country born not seventy years ago
And the year in mention is two thousand seventeen.
The glory never rewritten,
The diversity ever been and seen.

It had dreamt of long-lived successes ,
Which are crushed today because of people who hide notes under their mattresses.
People who bribed and were being bribed,
Forgot the whole country's mumbling cries.
And the story repeats it end.

Do you know my child?
Girls used to cry,
And there wasn't a single one to hear them die.
And till today! it's 'the thought of the day!' still waiting to be followed,
'To respect girls since they're no longer a dismay- and let the olden notion be dropped away!'
And the story repeats it's end.

We have bots on the streets!
And scientists say in a spree,
We've created milestones that'll last for centuries!
The civilians say in exaggerated dismay,
It would've been better if you would've created a sword to slay!
And the story repeats it's end.

I see starving, abandoned, dying children, on the streets
And almost EVERY unborn baby cries:
I won't enter this world mom!
The cityscape makes me freeze to death,
Please don't let me enter it mom!
I feel the need to witness the heavens' sheath.
Of course, the story repeats it's end.

We've lost ourselves and found something not worth the search my child,
And our mindsets tell us to crave,
Even for the smallest things possible,
That are gone and aren't available today."

On hearing her granny's answer,
Little Avril was forced due to pain,
To board the way to the engulfed stars.
And she lost her breath,
As she couldn't hear the lie any longer
And the story repeated it's end again.

Have we Indians lost ourselves too?
In forty years of these atrocities?
It doesn't matter whether we're living in 2017 or 2057!
But the real question still remains a MYSTERY.
_____________________________

A poem dedicated to the India I live in, and this poem is an imaginative propagation of what my country will be like after forty years from now. Let's hope for the best :)
However, this poem is equally applicable on our present globe too.