My Family Heirloom Poem by Rajendran Muthiah

When the deposed Afghan ruler,
Shah Shuja was a guest at the palace
of the King, Jaswant Singh of Marmat(Kashmir) ,
he gifted a sword with a hilt
embellished with precious stones
to Zorawar Singh, the Palace- Guard,
who became the intrepid Dogra General
in the first quarter of the 19th century.
The descendants of Zorawar Singh
still keep it as a family heirloom.

The school-mates of a village nearby mine
would boast about the long choppers,
swords and daggers, obsolete guns
and the ramrods used to push explosives
into holes made in the rock in wells while deepening.
These are thrown in a corner of their mud-houses.
Still at times, the young men lose balance
use these relics and land in jails.
The heirlooms might be haunted by
the ghosts of their forefathers.

My parents haven't left any gold or platinum
gun or sword, drugs or poppy seeds
or any technology to make bombs and trigger
or print fake notes of the countries around.
A few acres of dry lands are there in a remote village
with no crops to pillage by the human brutes
or to ravage by the failing monsoons.
What else could they pass down to their heirs?
No invention made like Edison
or service rendered like Theresa.
Lack of education prevented them
from inventing things of marvels.