Temples are out of bounds for devotees.  Worshippers are ordered out from churches and mosques. Panic has spread. Corona invasion is emasculating priests and pujaris. 

The politicians, who used religious shrines under the gaze of cameras, have turned their back to them as if not to be blessed with a divine curse for all their criminal gymnastics.  Some have decided to let the divine beings take a well-deserved rest as the latter are nauseated by the mumbo-jumbo performance of the nation’s leaders in the Covid crisis. 

A microscopic virus stands guard at the entrances of temples, churches, gurudwaras and mosques announcing: Whom are you looking for in the four corners of this ornamented mansion? The deity whom you seek is not here. He is out there with the masses bereft of oxygen and struggling to survive.  

Your deity is out there straining and struggling to console the Covid affected patients on hospital verandas and in car parks waiting for beds. Or, may be, with a wake-up call, knocking on the gates of the Temples of Justice, pleading for a balanced judgment!  Did you not see your deity accompanying the long procession of coffins with wails and lamentation? Your land, rich with deities and religious sanctuaries, is in lamentation because you have locked out your holy of holies, without letting in the sick and the dying who are in need of breathing space. Your deity is shell-shocked and no longer wants to dwell in such ornamented corners. 

Your rituals and festivals, your drum beats and bugles, your elephantine displays are but naked demonstrations of the emptiness of your heart bereft of its humanity. This land, rich with millionaires and billionaires, Bollywood stars and singing celebrities, cricket gods and business Yogis, has run out of medicine, oxygen, ventilators, vaccines, hospital beds and breathing space. What a joke! May be, those business tycoons and play-acting eminences are looking down from their high rise mansions clutching their pots of money and certificates of ‘honour’ even as their deities are there in the streets below giving a helping hand to carry dead bodies to crematoria or cemeteries.  

You pooh-poohed my strength as a miniscule virus and sat massaging and inflating your ego by calling poor masses to spill out in the streets for your election rallies and festival follies. Have not such ego-boosting exercises contributed to my fast growth and pandemic invasion?  Your dream merchants and troll agents added dash and drama to your political gimmicks of governance. What a mockery!

When will you come to your senses and realize your folly?  Don’t ask me, a tiny virus pardon for your foibles and follies, for your criminal misconduct, for murderous mania. Ask the nation pardon. Forget your ego. Do not trust yourself. Time is past. Consult the best brains, scientists, researchers, planners and all. Break open the vaulted money paradises of business magnates who bribe gods and goddesses with gold and unaccounted money. Let oxygen flow like elixir from heaven. This is the hour accountability and action. Act now or perish in the dustbin of history. 

Do not hide under the silly excuse of having no resources. The nation’s money is in the national kit. It is not meant for monumental erections of statues and temples, parliament vista and paradise villa.  Break open the vault of money kept as Boss’s Fund or No man’s Right. Confiscate the wealth and property of the bank defaulters and absconding looters of national wealth and use that resource to buy syringes and ventilators or for building oxygen plants.  

Or, are you waiting for more of my viral waves to consume and turn the nation into a crematorium? Before nemesis strikes you, save the nation. When you will be booked to stand before the bar of conscience, what will your weak kneed defence be?