A Lonely Child's Note
“I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.”
- George Orwell
May Mangoes
ReplyDeleteat the native place
50 years ago,
fussed over
by
assortments
of those
who saw my father grow up...
mornings
fooling in the river,
a warm lunch,
raiwal mangoes dripping
on the buniyan,
and a
hot afternoon sleep
on
someone's lap,
listening
to a story.
Today,
we have a farmhouse,
that sees us on
"weekends" ,
page 3 bhakri
and sizzling pithla
Oooh-la-la
and the little boy
traipses around on his designer bike,
on planned paths,
till he spies
the Big tree,
and
walks away
to an airconditioned lunch.
The cycle
simply wraps itself
round the broad waist
of the green matriarch,
and looks forlornly at
the plantain trees.
A Farm house
but
not
a farm home....