Mother, My Mother

The noisy cicadas have done with their evening songs,

As night’s darkness befalls to rouse fireflies in throngs,

My mother hasn’t yet returned from her paddy field.

My bro and I gaze the desolate path which leads to the hill.

My little sister awaits too with the milk-feeder she emptied.

There rises sweet smell of boiling red-rice (a good feed)

From our brass pot, blistering and mundanely murmuring,

That I put on the grate. Our fowls now hungrily clamoring.

Our pig yawik and her six piglets are back in their cozy pen,

Readying for a good rest and wandering the next day again.

Still, my mother hasn’t returned from her paddy field.

My siblings gaze the moon-blanched path to the hill.

Missing my father too; but he’s away with his new bride,

Dallying, in his in-laws’ village- where the knot was tied.

My mother is toiling alone in her field, for our upkeep,

Braving hot sun or pelting rains all just for a good-reap.

Here she comes. Aha! Loaded with fresh corns

And cucumbers in the basket (on her back), bit torn.

My brother and I haste to pick the ones bigger;

I win. He is on the verge of crying; I surrender.

My sister is first to be fed and then rest of us all dine

On the gigantic family plate—rice, chilly, rice-wine

And salt in the dinner. Not complaining today,

For to have tasty meals, there always is another day.

My mother’s weather-beaten cloth is now faded

And tattered. It smells of toil but she’s unfazed.

Her hairs are pale and lifeless- dusts so rendered.

And her hands made coarse by scratching of earth.

Even the bitumen-filled cracks on her bare feet

Won’t deter her from climbing the hill. Her teeth

Were reddened by sweet tree barks she chewed.

Gaudy dresses and slippers are all she eschewed.

Caging her neck with my arms, this I promised:

“Amma, I’ll buy you betel-nut and get you dressed

With dear cloths when I become a man with a job.”

Then, smilingly she pads my back before her silent sob.

But I am not ordained to keep those promises of mine,

For she not lived long enough till the day I shine.

My father was on a trip to far a place when she died,

Whispering indistinctly to me. Helpless, I cried.

The ailment was lurking inside her, sans a choice,

Steadily killing, first her vitality then her voice

Turning her into a breathing ensemble of bones

And until life’s last jiffy--laid-up and pain prone.

Neither the mumbo-jumbo nor the medication

Could rid her of the belly’s fiendish affliction.

A quarter century after her passing, I realized this:

She died of an operable ailment called appendicitis.

My sweat’s modicum of worldly goods in hold

Are hollowed with her not around to behold

And share. Her poor and sign-less grave is now lost

To man’s greed for land; it’s to memories all I accost.