It was my body talking and I thought I’d listen to the outbursts coming from different parts of me; my feet and shoulders, arms and palms, all having an argument. “I can’t figure out why you should get the vaccine jab!” whined my feet to my upper arm, “We’ve all had a tough year this whole pandemic time and why should you be chosen before the rest of us?”
“I agree!” said my chest, heaving violently, “Here I gasp away, all morning to keep Bob fit, hoping to build his silly immunity, even overexerting myself! Shouldn’t I get the jab first?”
“You?” asked my feet again, “I’ve been the one who’s had to take the brunt of his exercising, wearing myself thin with his hectic jog and run, all to keep Covid away…”
“Wearing yourself thin?” smirked my palms, “It’s we who have been wearing ourselves into near invisibility after being washed with his different soaps a hundred times a day! Couldn’t he have at least invested in a liquid wash, instead of rubbing us thin day in and day out? And now, no vaccine jab for us! Whoa!”
It was my pounding heart that intruded into what could have turned into a mutiny, “Enough guys!” it said, “I think it’s immaterial who gets the jab.  It doesn’t make the rest of us less important! Finally, we’ll all be benefitted with that shot!”
“Or vice versa!” said my upper arm, “If the jab doesn’t work for me, we’ll all be dead!”
“Exactly!” said a rumble deep below my bed.
“Who’s that?” I cried.
“I’m the land below you!” rumbled the voice.
“Bombay?” I asked.
“That’s only part of me!” said the same voice, “I am your Motherland! And I wish our dear politicians who are bent on destroying me, could have heard this conversation!”
“Which part?” I asked pleasantly, “The one where my feet they’re important, or where my chest aches for the jab?”
“The part, where you all die if the jab goes wrong, for one part!” whispered the land beneath me, “How I cry as I see the different parts of me, jabbed with poison every day!”
“Poison?” I asked incredulously.
“And just like your chest or limbs if infected would all die, the same with the different communities, castes and creeds who I’m made off! That if one or two start getting jabbed not with a vaccine to heal but ones to kill and annihilate, then it won’t just be an upper arm that will die, but the whole part of me!”
Suddenly all my body parts, my feet and shoulders, arms and palms whispered, “We are all as important as the other!”
There was an eerie silence except for the wracking sobs from the Land below..!

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