Poem of a (grand)son She asks me, in a shy tone, “What is love?” I tell her that love Is a 42 year-old thin mother, with scarred eyesight, With protruding bones, With depleting HB levels, scampering towards her ill-paid teaching job with a hand-bag full of answer sheets with a burden she can’t handle so that her children can study, sleep, eat, love, just as normal people do. Normal people with normal lives. Nothing more. Nothing less. I tell her that love is a worn-out bajaj chetak of a father, as old as Adam’s rib, ,and ridiculed by his friends seated on their smug Hondas, he doesn’t abandon for the fear that his children should ever be asked, out of helpless poverty, to abandon studies And to migrate to a distant muslim weavers’ village. That his children should ever sit in a college lobby With nothing to eat But a torn Marx, in translation, While their friends sit at a distance slyly peeking into each others’ lunch boxes for items they don’t have. I tell her that love is a jalebi packet That a grandfather, who sells tickets, behind a counter in a old cinema hall, never fails to bring, while limping to his home after a matinee show of an empty hall for his hungry grandkids exhausted After a day’s work at school, And who drag themselves to their grandparents’ home, and involuntarily stretch their hand For a jalebi dripping with love of A content grandfather. Then, she asks me, in silence, “What is tragedy?” Tragedy is the poem of love Of a (grand) son Which his grandfather can’t read, Which his father can’t feel, Which his mother can’t understand. Their tongues of poetry, Their idioms of love, Their metaphors of tragedy, Are different. She moves closer, Calms my shaking hand, Kisses my tears of guilt, With her whisper “Same love. Different tongues.” Same love. Different Tongues. ( To all the mothers, fathers, and grandfathers who cannot read/understand their (grand) sons poems) by Abul Kalam Azad
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 02:55:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015