O rubber stamp, small king of the counter,
you who have never read a single page
yet decide the fate of all of them —
I sing of you.
You sleep in a drawer beside a dried-out pen
and a calendar stuck on a year nobody remembers,
and when the clerk wakes you with a kiss of purple ink
the whole building holds its breath.
Ministers come and go like monsoon clouds.
Their portraits fade on the corridor wall.
But you remain, round-faced and unbothered,
the only official who never resigns.
My birth was not true until you touched it.
My land was a rumour until you said so.
My pension, my passport, my dead father’s name —
all of us waiting in a file, like orphans,
for your thump to make us real.
Some say the country runs on laws.
Some say it runs on votes, or prayers, or oil.
I have stood in enough queues to know:
it runs on the wrist of a tired man after lunch,
and whether, today, he feels like lifting you.
O stamp, forgive me for hoping.
I have brought three photocopies, self-attested.
I have brought my patience, folded twice.
Come down on me, gently, the way a blessing should,
and tell the world I exist.
