The weight of a careless line (Poem)

(She watched in quiet dismay as a Kathak teacher asked her students, their ghungroos still tied, to slip on footwear over them. Bound by her role as an intern, she said nothing. Yet the silence within her later spilled out as a poem)

Today,

the ghunghroos did not sing

they recoiled.

She spoke,

and reverence was undone

in a single, careless line:

“Wear your chappals.”

How lightly we step

over what was once worship.

These bells were meant

to touch only surrender,

to rise in rhythm

like offerings at a shrine.

But today,

they met the ground

without prayer,

without pause.

And I stood there

holding a silence

too heavy for sound.

If those who teach

forget to bow,

what will the students learn

except forgetting?

Today,

it wasn’t just a moment

it was a fracture

no rhythm could hide.

by Neereja Premanandhan Nair