The following poem by Sangeetha Menon from Chennai, Tamil Nadu won Ten Thousand Rupees in Wingword Poetry Competition 2026.
Flying Bombs and blowing landmines
while we eat dosa and tomato chutney.
Reading news of stock markets crashing,
investing purples, oranges and greens.
Greens. Eat your greens. Food is pricier.
Fuel is gold. We’d still drink that than water.
Can I get some ice? Before it all melts.
Can’t you see? We live capriciously,
wild and free. So, what if we live
of a disastrous reign in the house of money?
Oh wait, there’s a war. No. Wars!
No no! What was that story again on the gram?
We have short attention spans?
That’s Nemo in Dead Dory. Dory was trans?
But yes, the war(s). Can’t you see we’re better?
(And maybe lucky) We only take what’s ours;
not force ourselves on others the way history
has on our mothers. We live in peace (with terms
and conditions applied). It’s a good life
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money.
Why are you angry? This isn’t the first time.
The world has ended before. It will end again.
But we will escape to colonise places in galaxies
far away. This isn’t a Van Gogh painting, nor an
Orwell meets Murakami story. This my friend,
is very much reality. (Even unicorns go bankrupt now.)
We are not deaf, dumb or blind.
We merely know how to prioritise.
And you would be silly to say that in
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
don’t know the value of freedom.
The value of silence. We too fight battles.
But we must live. You see, we’re like roaches.
Relentless. We might be killed infinitely but
we will still live in ancestral habits. So, the bombs
can keep flying and the landmines blowing.
The screams can keep deafening and our conscience staining.
But we will still eat breakfast while reading papers,
in the house of money and say, we
lived happily during the war.