Depositing My Son To School! Poem by Rajeev Deshpande

Years of discretion
have taught the old maid
to keep at bay
the menacing troops
of tiny tots
at the point of a stick
and with her piercing gaze.

No one dares to cross the frontier.

Tension mounts.

Bent with burdensome education
on the backs
and armed with
their swirling water bags,
the tiny feet are ready,
as if to attack.

The bell rings.

What could even a venomous serpent do,
before the swarm of ants?

The old maid withdraws.

Defying the law and order
which have kept them on pins and needles
for over twenty minutes
the troops charge in.

Keeping pace with them,
I drag my son along the flank,
and after finding a wave in his favour,
I gently push him.

He drifts along somewhere
towards his alloted destination.

I'm now a reed,
firm and erect,
rooted on the bank of a babbling stream,
occasionally being shoved.

My eager eyes keep the track of my son,
till he dissolves in the rout.
And then every child in the throng
appears to me as my own.

The unmannerly, indisciplined world
of the innocent angels
reels before me.
I lift my hand
and wave a general good bye
in the midst of the whirl.

I turn back to get lost
in the outside world of
well mannerly, well disciplined hypocrites!
(Femina, Feb 1998)