Shrine-building Nation

We took out a war film, cut out the words, and let the sound run on.

The men, their bodies, became extensions of the sound; migrant workers from all reaches of the empire, who neither understood each other, nor spoke the same tongue. The aural detritus of bomb blasts and artillery fire, kept the wheelbarrows rolling and the hammers smashing and clattering in quick succession. Images of mushroom clouds loomed overhead. The ukrainian workers, belted with passion. A high-strung bunch, wishing they had stayed home with their mothers. Any distractions were pulverized once their ears were adequately saturated with war drums. They worked like negroes!

One million hands are ready today. This week they are tasked with chiseling her gilded lips. An artist's rendition is blown up on a large screen in the middle of the gardens. Every meal is served under her panopticon gaze.

No incantations and no mantra, She only demands mute exaltation. Our lips do not part in reverence, our work here is a silent wind-born hymn, rising and swirling with every addition, floating across burnt-out fields and brackish waters, up to the purple mountains.

I kneel before the deity; her eyes and lips have that narcotized tranquility of assured omniscience.