So, I say a few things of endearment and love….: A poem 

I never heard of leaves falling in September, 

back home in Mumbai; where there was summer 

throughout the year! And how it rained, as I 

saw my paper boats race only a little and then turn 

to shreds in the torrent. In Goa, in my school holidays, 

it was tropical paradise – coconut palms, mango trees,  

java fruit, cashews, jackfruit and palmyra – and we,  

barely aware of this frutescence, taking it for granted. 

Dad sleeping in the shade of the tree, like a little lion 

with no mane (short-cropped hair had he). He’d give  

my brother soccer tips at the village game! Dad like  

a diminutive sized large mountain of solidity. And I  

never thought he’d die before making it to his sixties, 

or that he’d grow so very old in his fifites, burdened by  

the weight of six children, and relatives’ children as well!  

I can still hear Mum’s golden voice, clear as a nigh-oil- 

lamp shining in the salle of our Goan Holiday home,  

or the kitchen where she laid out our dinner.  

Childhood is blessed with an enchanted reality; and  

adulthood blessed with memories of gratitude at that beauty, 

if we care to cherish them. For memories are like siblings, 

if fortunate, can last with you as long as you live! 

And I thought leaves didn’t fall in September! I swear, 

I never ever fell…even if a leaf would in wild weather, 

even if mangoes fell out of the trees from natives shaking the trees… 

all through my trials and tribulations. Especially, since  

my beliefs in divine intervention became absolutely manifest 

on that softly whispering exhilarating warm gift-of-a-night in the July-end of 1996!