The final whistle

did not conclude the match...

It merely nationalised my broken memory.

When I was watching the final World Cup

or the World Cup final

The stadium became a Parliament

where every misplaced pass

was standing like the opposition MPs

of hindsight mind.

Messi alone

walked like a constitutional amendment

bearing upon his shoulders

the exhausted grammar

of an entire constitution..

Around him,

the other eleven passports

forgot their visas to excellence.

Their boots

voted for hesitation.

Their lungs abstained.

Their shadows

crossed the floor of history

without raising a single question.

I watched.

And suddenly discovered

that my own unwritten pages

had been warming the substitute's bench

for years.

How many revolutions

have I postponed

by waiting for a perfect referee?

How many poems

have died in committee meetings

inside my skull?

Every morning

my intentions campaign for power.

Every evening

they become coalition governments,

too fragile

to pass even the smallest bill

of courage.

The nation inside me

wants to have a PM

like Modiji and an Education Minister

like Dharmendra or Smiriti Irani..ji

every hour.

My confidence resigns

because of the immoral agitators

assembeled inside my Janta Mandir..

My doubt

wins the by-election

without contest

The media of memory

replays my missed opportunities

with multilingual subtitles.

Failure is never live.

It is always telecast in high definition.

Some days I become like Messi

not because I possess genius,

but because

every ordinary citizen must occasionally carry

an extraordinary burden

that was democratically distributed

yet mysteriously privatised.

On other days

I resemble the anonymous midfield

running, occupying space,

manufacturing statistics,

while history records only the name

that lifted the trophy or the honour

Perhaps every civilisation survives

because one heart continues to play

even when ten hearts are negotiating surrender.

The scoreboard, after all,

is merely the distorted popularity commissions

of a single evening.

But character counts ballots

across geological time.

So tomorrow

I shall enter my unfinished life

like a footballer

walking back onto the pitch

after an unforgivable first half,

knowing

that the republic of the self

is not defended

by perfect performances,

but by refusing to secede

from one's own possibilities.

Ragavapriyan Thejeswi.