You can be crazy, weird and plain irrational But you simply cannot be anti-national The nation won’t tolerate this tolerance You’ll go from your tuppence to comeuppance If you raise an improper slogan Be prepared to face Quick-gun Murugan He’ll thrash you till you say “Ouch, Amma” You’ll sound like that bullet in Ummagumma! Now, who exactly decides on your chant? When do they say your rage is not a rant? Who is the witness and who is the judge? This, dear reader, is where they go and fudge There will be front liners and bystanders One’s goose will be another’s gander But decisions will not be left to the courts Why bother them when you have goons and cohorts? There are 50 shades of the nationalist grey Though tricolour is what they say is at play Your Nationalism is not my Nationalism We stand united, but with our very strange schisms The due process of law, as it is widely understood ceases to matter for some as it should They take the law into their self-righteous hands They slap and punch like they had magic wands! This is patriotism, worn on unseemly sleeves Built on assumptions, half-truths and longstanding peeves Justified by slogans and circular logic They produce outcomes that seem truly tragic Outrage is the new religion, and emotion the new reason And anyone with sober views may be charged with high treason This is no modern republic, but an ostrich’s desert sand Democracy is the new Alice, and India the Wonderland!