wake every morning to now familiar jabs of pain. How long before I will hear your voice, feel your hair as you lie on my lap? Till then
At the end of the day I just count those little miracles
Emails from Gaurav, Venetia, Karishma…
Seeing life’s many aspects in all that each of you do
Hearing Pallavi’s voice from the other side of Delhi
Tubby’s “Mother” winging its way across oceans!
Having all my mad academic friends for dinner
Debating Mangal Pandey and Hazaron Khwaishain Aisi
Thinking Ani’s home must always have this clamour
Saying yes to Rahul’s, Will you like to come to Pakistan?
Working with a Committee, giving shape to a panel, chiselling a paper
Encountering an old flute maker
who brings his wares all the way from Calcutta
A smiling mochi telling me as he repairs my shoes,
Even if you don’t bring work, just come to say hullo
The namkeen seller of Lodi Gardens selling small stacks of peanuts and chana
Sharing with little Abhishek the wonder of crysanthemums in the sun
Taking me back to Ani’s “Ma, are these poppies,” years ago
Seeing his eyes light up when I give him Play Blade
In Abhishek there is also Tubby all over again
with his He Man, that I teased him were his dolls!
Those little miracles of motherhood
None other than a mother can know.
Anjana announced, I am to be a grandmother
Handing sweets she declared, I take back all I said
On the overrated mystique of motherhood!!
From another world my mother urges me, Never give up
This life is not yours alone. In you
Are your grandmother and her grandmother before her
They fostered love and the earth and bore life and all its pain
Return to the earth what you have got from it manifold.
Generation after generation of women bear life
And only too often, young death. Why
should I have thought that I’d be exempted, protected?
Like all of them I carry on because
At the end of the day I just count each little miracle.