Valsa George

Among palm fronds and paddy fields
Stands veiled an ancient structure
Erstwhile the abode of innocence and ease
A house now left empty of its throng
Sheltering a happy brood, once it throbbed and thrived
Within whose walls, we were born and bred
Crying and whining, laughing and prattling
Pampered and cared, we grew as kids
Corrected and controlled, we grew into adults
Here we shared a thousand mingled thoughts
A hundred hopes, dreams and fears
Saw the dawn of placid summer morns
And the descent of cold winter nights.

With hurrying feet as Time treaded past
Migrated we to new terrains and climes
Like young birds out from their nests depart
To wider skies and heady heights.

Sweet home! Earthly haven!
Harbour us once more under thy roof
To soothe the turbulent hearts into peaceful stillness
To quench the wayward fancy to curl into primordial lineage
To relish once again that Arcadian bliss
And to splice together the snapped up ties.

But Oh! The love of our parents
Can it be retrieved?
They sleep content within their cold alabaster cells
Will they come and flit unseen
To shower their benediction on us
Begotten of their flesh?

As my limp feet tread the land unwilling
The past undulates and memories stretch incessant
My moist eyes hold back the flood of grief
To see thy glory fled, thy grandeur vanished
The neat courtyard where we romped and played
Now overgrown with thistles and thorny plants!
Lo! Under the Jamun tree, lie un gathered
Black glossy succulent fruits
Gone rotten in scattered heaps!

Time elapses, wrought with change
Change! Nature's irreversible law
The joy that we had in times of yore
Far surpasses the sheen of new opulence and pomp

Around the hearth where Mother blew the flame alive
We sat cuddled round on December morns
Watching lazily the wisps of smoke
Curling up from the damp piece of half burnt wood
And ate the ‘rotis' right from the pan

Now we have kitchens of gleaming chrome
Costly gadgets and neat tiled hearths
But the food we eat tastes so bland
Lacking something of that homely fare
Richly spiced with maternal love
And served hot from pots blackened by the flames

On hot summer days, we helped our father
A tiller of soil who loved his toil
Carry dried bales of hay
For the milking cows and their tawny calves
Who gave us pails of milk and curd
And heaps of cow dung for our fields.

Memories come clamouring down
Like the lash of cascading rain

Here, I stand transfixed,
An alien,
At the threshold of my own home
Visited by recollections sweet and sour
Hesitant to encounter the unpalatable truth
That the pleasant fields I once walked over
And the old familiar faces, I love to look on
Are gone!
Gone forever, never to return.