Turns Poem by Daniel Trevelyn Joseph

“Come back”, he wrote, yes my dad said so:
I had left Madras later renamed Chennai,
In 1968 I left, selected into the IAS by UPSC.

I was on training in Satara, Maharashtra
A bachelor sitting in a Class III quarters,
Among 18 other tenements in three blocks.

Near to the bungalow occupied then
By Dr Mutaliq, and Mr P R Parthasarathy IPS
Superintendent of Police, and 10 years my senior.

Had picked up very little Marathi in Mussoorie
And feeling alone in this place, no friend,
No relative, and me looking blank on holidays.

Wrote home accordingly, and father responded promptly,
Come back, leave the job: for a middle-class family
To tell the eldest son to leave IAS: but my dad was special.

Nearly 10 years later in Buena Vista Mumbai
I remember on the balcony telling me wife
“Let us get out: We can go back, I leave IAS,

And work as Lecturer but let us quit and move
From here, the State and go far away from people
Who disturb our family happiness”.

The daughter, only child, six years old
In the next bedroom on the 15th floor,
Unaware of the turmoil among adults around.

Everything subsides: nothing remains: I did not leave IAS:
Time has a way of turning both ordinary and disturbing
Material, churning them and in time transmuting into gold.

Thirty years later now I write verse around those words,
Which have lived in memory, accompanied by events
Of no ordinary significance: does gold have anything more?