A tale of a village home, and two cities: A poem

I am in hot sandy playing fields

where the cotton clouds always

make way for lucid skies in the

heat of May. A country of lasting

childhood memories, of lazy winds

swirling around mango trees, and the

regular visits to the beach. And the evening

gathering at the `copel’ to pray to Mother

Mary and patron saint San Sebastien, for rain!

I am burnt by the sun, but laughing

till the evening comes, around the

smoky light of kerosene lamps throwing

dizzying shadows in the mild inebriation

of a `coppacho’ of feni. Dad seems like a warrior-king,

Mum, an empress in her own right,

and we children falling asleep in the steamy night!

And I think I can’t go back, without the prospect

of losing that enchantment in the thick of mid-June

and the rains, and back to school in the city!

I am just an echo again, a child lost in

the spaces of school, longing to get home

to an overprotection by parenthood. How

cities turn to make dust of themselves in progress,

In the soot of factories, cars, newer luxuries,

skyscrapers, shattering all horizons with adulthood.

And I am rising to painful realisations,

There is only a limited but compelled recognition of change,

because of challenges of chaotic circumstances

But for a sudden avuncularity and love found

and the change again of breaking  apart.

A city falls back in time; its dust, pollution,

orphans, poverty and constricting mileu

dissipate in the clouds of departing

and fresh arrival. A new start! Do I seek that love

again? How I feel a stranger in this orphanage

of newer challenges and a life lost to

poverty and sacrifice?! I am still stoically smiling in

this new city, twenty-one years on!

Holding on to the grace of my ancestors,

even if there is no home for me in this foreign home!