By Sarang

Dear Honourable Prime Minister of India,

I need to tell you something. They don't like you.

To be honest, they never really liked you, but even in this time of our biggest existential crisis, when you need all of us, every single citizen of India, to back you with all our might, they don't like you.

They don't like you when you take a daring decision to lock down a country of 1.3 billion people, to save their own lives.

They don't like you when you send flights to get back your countrymen from the riskiest areas to relative safety; they say ‘but the migrants had to walk’.

They still don't like you as you send thousands of buses overnight to bring back migrants to their hometowns as now, they say migrants are at risk because of the crowding.

Maybe they are expecting you to arrange one cab per person or build them homes overnight with stashes of cash wherever they are? Whatever it may be, but they don't like you.

As the head of a developing nation taking a big hit on the economy, you lock down the country at a time and stage where half the world was roaming around in gardens and paid a hefty price with their lives.

Where some so-called heads of powerful nations, the so-called 'buck stops here' heads, could not even dare to lock down a state, you executed the world's largest lockdown in the history of mankind. They still don't like you.

They don't like you for the confidence and morale boosting in your speech that united and channelised an entire nation of a billion and they still don't like you when you exude humility and awareness of the situation by apologising to the poor of the country for having to do this to them and the nation.

They don't like you when you release an economic package for the poor.

They don't like you when you repeatedly ask them with folded hands to stay at home to save their own freaking lives.

They don't like you when you beg them to express gratitude for the unsung heroes while your government is bringing in test kits from Korea and Germany and setting up required facilities on a war footing.

Now, Sir, these are the same folks who cannot even figure out how to entertain themselves and their family of four for 21 days but they expect you to have a perfect solution to the problem of 1.3 billion people of different needs.

These are the same folks who may not even have helped their neighbours or maids in need but they want you to distribute money to the needy equally, without lapses overnight.

Some of them can't even manage their home budget with a huge salary but they want you to manage the economy in these testing times without failures.

Some of them can't attend their offices or meetings on time and some may not even wake up on time despite alarm clocks but they want you to announce the lockdown in the morning to give them time to hoard and stash the essentials.

As if an announcement in the morning will have a different impact, silly!

Their walls are filled with pictures of police charging protesters, even if it was to save their own lives, but their walls shamelessly avoid posting thousands of Indians stuck in the Middle East brought back in Air India planes.

Their walls are filled with posts on migrants' sufferings but never a single post on what could be the solution to save lives without collateral damage.

Their walls shamelessly avoid showing Sikhs doing langar, Muslims opening up their hotels to feed the needy, Christians opening their hearts to not just humans but also the suffering dogs on the roads, common men opening kitchens, ordinary people working with government employees to distribute money, goods, food. Don't be surprised why. They don't like you.

They don't like you because for them you are part of a political party and ideology which they admonish and the fact that you won a majority in Indian elections twice, which they have neither the capacity nor the maturity to digest.

Alas, if, and only if, for one moment they could treat you as the head of the nation, head of their nation, the Prime Minister of India... but still, they don't like you.

And, Sir, you. You are at fault.

You don't boast of your government's humongous efforts to be the first one to bring in thousands of Indians back home without even thinking for a second about their race, religion, language, orientation, or even citizenship.

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