Inscriptions On The Tiles! Poem by Bishnupada Sethi

The flame of the kerosene oil lit lamp
Flickers, which I see lying on the wooden cot,
Kept on the verandah.
The pages of my book turn over
By the blow of slight breeze.
The red Mangalore tiles in the roof of my house
Return some light back to my face.
I gleam with good feelings
To read the lines on them
That “Love is God”.
Perhaps, a happy mason
Thought for some time
While creating a mould for making tiles.

As the days passed by,
I grew from my childhood
Reading those lines again and again.
The tiles withered
As they protected me from heat
Rain, cold and cyclone
Till I left for the town.

I remember the time
When a herd of monkeys
Camped on the tree tops for few days
Scaring all the dogs of the village,
As they jumped form one tree to another
From houses to trees to navigate a route
Over our heads,
They broke some of the tiles, to my pains
Though my father replaced them later.

Years after, now those lamps are gone
Like the red tiles on the roof
Giving way to the concrete and electric light.
In the village, I dream in the night
I look up to search for the inscriptions
A reminder of the bygone days!
But I wonder to discover
That my body is transplanted
With a number of tiles, made of earth
All red and baked by intense heat
With the inscriptions that “Love is God”.