My Mother-2

My Mother-2

On a certain cool saturday afternoon,

my mother unwound her coils of memory

(like the coils of bandage over her varicose veins)

as children and thronging grand children

struggled unbelievingly to peek into

her prankful pigtailed past.

When the drama troupe had come to town

she had stolen out at the dead

of two successive nights

to see the same play twice.

(These days she turns the TV firmly off

if the evening movie is on air the second time.)

She had played marbles with that

dark skinned neighbourhood boy

who turned taciturn with every game he lost.

That one fateful day

when she took to the hills

and shared a tree-shelter

with a girl friend and one stray cow

for five hours as the

rain poured rivers down the hill side

and came home skipping

sodden skirt and all-

late, after night fall

to receive the one and only

spanking of her life from a

doting freedom fighting father.

She smarted real anger when

in the eighth year of her schooling,

her father took her out of school

and ended her marble dreams

and she in vengeance explored

the world of letters, reading every

book, novel, poem, essay-

any printed word that came her way

and dreamed and dreamed

till marriage cut her short.

At this point,

Father, who till now had sat sullen,

suddenly brightened

and came into his own.

(Remark: This last para too may make a good poem, but is not fair to my father.)