Under a tree she sat frozen

braving the cruel cold wind.

Her face full of creases and wrinkles,

mind full of  undying old melancholies.

Victim of Time’s constant blows

a vegetable had she become, with

matted hair, trembling hands and empty mind.

When cracked up life counted her days,

she was out there waiting god’s call,

looking at the scars of her life.

Broken long was her mirror of memory

making her a rudderless recluse. Piecing

together the splinters, she still saw

the splendors that once glowed her home,

her mom filling harmony around her,

feeding her, nursing her, and adoring her.

Nights saw her mom a singing Koel,

when she chanted munificent lilts.

So soft and soft, so sweet and sweet,

it made her sleep an insouciant sleep.

‘Mother gone to god’, so said her dad,

when, on a wintry morn, she woke up.

Motherless, she saw her world tumbling down

felt only void and vacuum around her.

Ever hearing mom’s sweet lilts in home

she began walking the hard terrains of life

with a father who soon brought home a new wife.

A wife, ever caring dad’s carnality, drove

from home all memories of dear mom

 made it morally askew and lovelorn.

Alone and abandoned on dad’s death,

she grew up in a farm away from home

toiling out there all through day

just to keep the pangs of hunger at bay.

Living lonely in a lust-strewn world

she had lusty nocturnal animals

crawling around her just to smell the

 bloom of her vierge.’ What is husband?’

she moaned lying awake during nights.

‘Will I have one’? she thought thro tears. 

Floating under the dark ocean of life,

a wastrel she had become with no man

ever ready to give her a wedding Bliss.

Feeling like the moon gleaming on a desert

she wept and wept for a husband;

wept and wept for a baby-girl whom she

liked to carry on her shoulders and

sing to her mom’s old soothing lilts,

so soft and soft, so sweet and sweet,

to make the baby sleep an insouciant sleep.

She sat frozen under a tree

Braving cruel cold winds.

Her face full of creases and wrinkles

Mind full of dark old melancholies.

Victim of Tim’s constant blows

A vegetable she had become at eighty with

matted hair, trembling hands and empty mind.

When broken-life counted her days

shattered dreams putting out her hopes

she was there still waiting for a new dawn.