My Father

1
I looked down at my father,
doubled up on his straight-back chair,
gasping for his asthmatic breath.

In a short while,
as the whistling spasm subsided,
he straightened up,
The twinkle came back to his eye,
“It is because I climbed the stairs”,
he said.

“Was he always like this?”,
I asked my mother,
As my father downed his glass of milk
in one long breathless gulp
and sat panting.
“He can do nothing slowly”,
hissed my mother
as the daughters-in-law, mocking,
smiled at each other.

2
He was my age,
when he left the small town
for the Big City,
wife and two children in tow
and then sired me
in a rented house-
also upstairs.

Having always lived in the Big City,
In my own flat,
Having never had children,
Having never had any difficulties
climbing stairs-
(I also drink my milk very slowly)
Our lives could not have been more different,
Which is why
I am always surprised,
When his past occasionally returns
to haunt me-
A nightmare bout of nocturnal asthma,

The result of a gene hastily borrowed,
Impossible to pay back!
------------


(The last two lines are copied from a poem by A.K. Ramanujan)