WHO AM I TO MY MOM?

It was a breezy Wednesday evening. Sun has settled to the turf. Scene was University of Madras Ground. A make-shift stage of which the banner read ZONAL-LEVEL SPORTS AND CULTURAL MEET – TNTEU. The gathering was awaiting Mrs. Apurva IAS, Secretary to the Government, Department of Higher Education. I, too, was there, having contested in the elocution early that day.

PED Mr. Ruban came up to me and pressing my palm said, “Krishna, you’ve bagged first prize in speech!” he’d pocketed the result from the announcement desk. My joy knew no bounds! I rang my mother to inform her of such gay news.

“Amma, I have a special gift on your birthday.”

Yes, it was 6^th April; my mom was ushering into her 41st year on this rented house.

“What is it?”

“Amma, I’ve got the first prize in speech!”

“What do you say? Is it true? Really, really?”

Even now I recall a sort of shiver I sensed in her voice while she swallowed that happy news.

Amidst all my accomplishments, accolades, awards, prizes, and ranks, I mull over my relationship with my dearest mother.

Days have wheeled fast. I’ve grown ineluctably, visibly taller than my mom in physique. But, can I boast I’m more intelligent than my mom? Can I downplay her intellect weighing against my bookish rubbish? Am I a good son if I say my mom’s no way near to my brilliance? What if I had become a master in English, a poet, an elocutionist, and a head full of brains? My talents, abilities, skills, and creative powers amount to cipher when compared to love for my mom.

I was once a foetus in her warm womb, an infant in her cosy bosom; she was to me omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Why should I make her feel insecure and uncomfortable in my presence? Why should I assert my eruditeness to her? In no juncture should she say, “My son’s simply too much to me.” Whomever, be it a son or daughter, behaving pompous to their parents with their learnedness is an outright betrayal.

My mom always feels that still I belong to her. I speak to her in childlike tones. I go to her, sniff at her sari, run my fingers over her ponytail, pat her head with loving monosyllables, pinch her chubby cheeks, bury my head on her lap, ask her wash my hair with oil, and a thousand others. She’s created me; I’m not here to demean her with what I’ve acquired of what others have created.

Who am I to my mom? Her beneficiary; extension of her person; symbol of her love for my father; her soul’s sole joy (as she’d often say); apple of her eye; he who called her “Amma” for the first time; and till breath ceases its in and out, a loyal devotee. I’d like to be how I was when she saw me first.

THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE IN A GLIMPSE

1. Michael Henchard sells his wife Susan and one-year-old child Elizabeth-Jane to a sailor called Newson in a fair in utter tipsiness.

2. Realising his grave error the following morning, he swears that he won’t drink for next 21 years.

3. In a jump of a chapter, 20 years elapse, and Susan and Elizabeth-Jane seem to be in search of Henchard.

4. Henchard meanwhile has become a rich corn-merchant and the mayor of a rustic town called Casterbridge.

5. Jane being ignorant of the fact that Henchard was her biological father, the secret which Susan didn’t reveal, Henchard and Susan reunite by a marriage.

DIRTY WORDS

I’ve to choose some words

To describe

My eyes.

Words are sacred, all of them

However filthy they’re to your eyes, yes, that word, F-word too.

My right eye, upper eyelid

Drools like a broken umbrella. Like this simile?

Pupil inside crusted with red, drier than a desert particle.

Child averts her face seeing the phantom.

Shapeless shape. Ugly! Dirty! filthy!

I’ve dirtied these sacred words

By tapping them

To describe

My eyes.

Hurt funs me, you know.

INSECURITY

I zoomed far

Into the pathless firmament

ON MY BLINDNESS

Light half way doused

But not the fire inward.

RATTRAP

Where’s kitchen, and where’s toilet in this shack?

Is there a nook here for god?

Is there a room for her to rap her saree?

Where shall she breastfeed her last one?

Is this called a floor on which she’s sitting now?

Holes, holes, up and down;

Up for rain to shower its curse

And down for bugs and worms to wriggle at night.

But how does a rat covet this floorless shack?

Didn’t they inform it this shack lies below poverty line?

Rat knows how to feed its stomach

What if she hasn’t considered the rat as her family member?

You might also find this rat in a millionaire’s flat tomorrow

But today,

The rat wants, it wants her food

She thinks of a rattrap to woo

And kill the rat, keeping a piece of coconut

As a draw, but what will she do

When her little girl cries of hunger?

She’s trapped now.

TOLERANCE PRACTICED

Kahlil, you learnt tolerance

From the intolerant.

Save I, all went to Island House

For an expo and returned.

At the round table, we dined

That hard core Christian snickered,

“These people are fools; they worship ghosts!”

“Worshiping Ghosts?” I stammered, perplexed.

And he replied,

“It was a Hindu temple.”

I felt an axe hewing my heart

My blood boiled but

I dropped my head and resumed eating

No retorts from me; he smirked and did so his friend.

I practiced tolerance, felt

High for not having gone low to hit him.

WOMAN THE SECOND MOST

To me she wasn’t just a teacher

But more than that

To her it wasn’t a work,

For she loved what she did

Bell and bill didn’t rust her heart

She became the lesson itself when it she taught

She pulled me if I were to fall

And pushed me to go up

I detect her step and scent

And admire her accent

Though I don’t have eyes,

I have her hands to lead me

Though I was with her just for three years,

The walls of my heart still echo with her presence

She said, “To me you aren’t just my student”

Our poetry continues...