Locked rooms

There's a room somewhere, locked up, left alone,

an empty corridor furred thick with dust;

no chink of sunlight, no winking cell phone -

days grow a skin in there, curdle and crust.

The guitar stands abandoned, falls out of tune,

no hand even offhand touches the frets,

the lamp's straight, the table's no longer strewn

with papers and sheet music and headsets.

The silence spins its own threads and curtains,

the paint in a corner sags by degrees,

months scab over, the door's harder to open,

locks won't yield to a bunch of rusty keys.

Neither you nor I go there too often,

the dust of silence is layered, and thickens.

Still kind of wrapped up in the 'house' metaphor. Too many locked rooms, too many subjects that we are silent about. Need to be aired out with a bit of straight talk. But meaningful dissent is being slowly stifled, it's being equated with a lack of patriotism or even criminality. Activists are raided and harassed. History is being revised to suit political agendas. 

Last week, an archaic law criminalising homosexuality was struck down by the Indian Supreme Court. Still a lot of inequality in my world, a lot of marginalisation and discrimination based on gender or sexuality or appearance or where someone was born. But one step away from that. Every step is a landmark and aids the slow march to the destination.