I can see a tear fall from my eye
like the sun shedding its tears through the sunbeam
on the high roof, as it fell on the floor, and grandma
told the time.
Outside the mangoes blushed in the silent wind
as Dad stocked up the cool dark store room
with goodies and mangoes and most delectable feni
for our stay. And I lay on the cool cement floor
all six years, within Mum’s embrace, even at the bath
from huge therapeutic copper pots and the wood-fired
meals in clay pots. This was an age which childhood staked
like the branches of the mango trees in the hot wind
blowing from the sea. I thought, we could just laze on the
hastily tied swing on a thick branch of the milk mango,
We watched the cows and goats go by, and aunts
getting on with the day’s work. Life was never easy since,
but I smiled in those gruelling shadows out of past enchantment!
And I was always a child in a tumultuous adulthood, swearing
that those days on the burning sands were the only vacation of my life!
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