Under a tree she sat
frozen,
braving the brutal cold wind.
Face full of creases and wrinkles,
mind, of undying old
melancholies.
Victim of Time’s constant blows
a vegetable had she become, with
matted hair, trembling hands and
empty mind.
Looking out for the last sun-set,
she was out there waiting and
moaning,
tending the scars of her life.
Broken long was her mirror of
memory
making her a hapless, rootles
recluse.
Thro the splinters, she still saw
the splendors that once glowed her
home,
her mom filling harmony around her,
feeding her, nursing her and adoring
her.
Nights saw her mom a singing Koel,
when she chanted munificent lilts.
So soft and soft, so sweet and
sweet,
it made her sleep an insouciant
sleep.
‘Mother gone to god’, said her
dad,
when, on a wintry morn, she woke up.
Motherless, she felt life a real
drag;
only void and vacuum around her.
Ever hearing mom’s sweet lilts in
ears
she began walking the hard terrains
of life
with a father who soon brought home
a new wife.
A wife, ever tending his libido,
drove
from home all memories of dear mom
made it morally askew and
abominable.
Alone and abandoned on dad’s
death,
she grew up in a farm away from home
toiling out all through day
to keep the pangs of hunger at bay.
Living lonely in a lust-strewn world
she had nocturnal animals
crawling around her forever.
’ What is husband?’
she moaned, lying awake during
nights.
‘Will I have one’? she thought thro
tears.
Floating on the dark ocean of
life,
a wastrel she had become with no man
ever ready to give her a Wedding
Bliss.
Feeling like the moon gleaming on a
desert
she wept and wept for a husband;
wept and wept for a baby-girl whom
she’d
like to carry on her shoulders and
sing to her mom’s old soothing
lilts,
so soft and soft, so sweet and
sweet,
to make the baby sleep an insouciant
sleep.
She sat frozen under a tree
Braving brutal cold winds.
Face full of creases and wrinkles,
Mind, of dark old melancholies.
Victim of Time’s constant blows
a vegetable she had become at eighty
with
matted hair, trembling hands and
empty mind.
When a derelict became life, calling
no shots;
When shattered dreams putting out
her hopes
She, the incorrigible, was still there,
squatting
and
Waiting for a New Dawn.
[The Art of Living presupposes that
we’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen. A tenacious one will
wait for a New Dawn even when he/she has one foot out in the limbo.]
Image Courtesy: Google
