Home Innovations Poem by Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

Soon after marriage we lived in Gadhinglaj,
Where Marathi was spoken, and she couldn’t.
While I was away in office, she wrote once
A short story in Tamil, with nom-de-plume ‘Joti’.

Child born unto us was baptized, and called Joti,
Teachers correcting spelling till told not derived
From Sanskrit but our names of Joseph and Tilaka,
For us, ‘Dotu’, that is how she referred to herself.

Being from the South, we always had coffee in bed,
She said “I’ll make it sweet” and tasted mine; it was:
For years we didn’t start having morning first coffee,
Till the other sipped it, and made it sweet.

In our first home, as we finished meals,
We’d go to wash-basin and she would say,
“I don’t know how to wash my hands” and I
Took her hand under the pipe and washed it.

When it was rare to see women driving
In rural areas, she would drive my jeep
Painted blue in the sub-division on long roads,
And sing old Tamil film songs happily.

These and other innovations made our home
A pleasure den in early years, when we lived
In Maharashtra – Gadhinglaj, Kolhapur, Bhir,
Satara away from relatives, classmates, friends...