Dear Son (May 20, 2010. Issue 17.)
You asked me the other day what I wanted to know, about why and how and where you got pulled by the moon tides. It was a full moon day. There was a poets’ meet in the noon. It was a day like any other day. Well here it is, a mother’s love poem for her son who was born eight years after her marriage.
Dear son, I used to gaze
at the stars for a spark of conceiving fire.
I was bereft. I had no one to play with.
Knew the smell of rotten religious eggs;
your father used to follow the snake’s trail
and I knew the vomit of dead burnt snails.
There was no doctor’s I had not tapped at.
Carrying samples in bottles some moving and alive---
their blank looks exposed. I persevered, braved nausea
and stayed in bed when I conceived , for you to breathe.
Even spoke to you in the womb-no gap of communication
then and when you were born I gave you my all.
Collected happy moments in photos
and sent you to paint, to science workshops, and the theatre
I watched you grow, laughing and happy.
*
Dear son, your kicking started in the womb.
Then little feet stamped my foot and
I became an extension of your own body.
A punch in the nose, a bash in the eye--
a fist in the gums so that all my teeth are rootless
I did not defend myself, so it seems.
But this time it was on the streets. Everybody watched.
I wanted you to feel the shame. I phoned your friend
I talked to your friend’s mom I did not want you
to ever do it again. But after two hours
you filled my ears with water, you locked me up
tore all those poems, lit up fragments and watched
the smoke clouds my eyes.
Later they brought me
all the poems that were read. But to top it all the
the next day you pretended nothing had happened.
the bruises in my thighs and shanks were contused
A knee-cap was rolling around circulating pain.
this scared me even more, all that violence fading
without traces, without remorse, and I feared a future
where violence begets violence and manifests
like a snowball oh hell with all my negative thoughts.
I wrote to my friends. Sought some clue on parenting.
Goodbye personal time. I turned into an automaton
did all those routine things without being spoken to.
Everyone was against me or so it seemed.
Then within a week I watched you go away
first to my cousin, then to an aunt then to an
old man in the opposite house. My shortcomings
I take the car when you have to go,
I don’t cook tasty food I don’t keep the house clean
I am always running to libraries and going for poetry
readings. Understand this. I care. I care. I want you
to know all those beautiful things like sharing, patience
kindness, compassion, respect for that beggar woman
over there. I am like that. I can love a father or a brother
with a robe. May be you haven’t seen other mothers like me.
So I am talking in my own language. Dear son
dear son I even went to a consultant, to help you
out. I know it is your age all those unspent energy
hormones bursting in your blood. Don’t make this my poetry.
I too have changed my religion like Mrs. Das. What
was previously poetry is now love familial love.
So now you know I live for you and your affection.
With pride I write this letter but I know you don’t need
words. |