Super Moms! Poem by Rajendran Muthiah

I’m not a champion in any game
and so I can’t call my mom, ‘a Super Mom’
but I’m sure, to no one, she had done any harm.

Tendulkar’s mother braved Mumbai traffic
to go and see him daily, where he learnt Cricket.
And her sacrifice is etched in his mind.

The boxer, Mary Kom’s mother sold shawls
and helped her move up in her nose-punching arts.
Her face was the same when Mary won or lost.

Without her mother, Usha wouldn’t be the star!
She had been the springboard for Usha to leap and fly.
Anand’s mother too led him into a game of single-combat.

Karthik’s mother loitered around the ground
to see him hit a Sixer and led him back home.
Mother of Amirtharajs was the Centre of their world!

But oh, my terrible past crawls up my deeper mind!
My parents, the untiring champions of farming work
had gone off this world unhonoured and unsung.

Unlettered they were but weren’t fettered
to go to lands near the Western ghats seeking work
when Nature failed to shower their lands.


She wasn’t waiting to see us back from the far off school.
But we’re waiting till midnight to see them back
after earning wages for the work they did till dusk.

Before we could wake up, they would have left the home.
They would bring some snacks to pull at our heart-strings;
But we would have slept and found the packs in the dawn.

Never they shed tears for that kind of ordeal.
But my eyes are wet thinking of those days
when dark was the night and bright was the day.

When she suffered a stroke after eighty,
She told me not to take her to the city for treatment
and sent me back to resume my public duty.

Went her calm soul soon into the realm of space.
Nor she was my super mom or the bike- riding modern mom.
But a guiding goddess residing in my battered heart
to brace me when shock after shock rocks and knocks me out!