Pritam's Blog
My Father Should Have Come With Us
When I was a kid
And we were poor
And we had nothing to eat at night,
On the terrace of our small house,
We would sit,
Me and my mother,
Staring at the night sky,
Because my father
Who was mad at her
For she couldn’t give him food to eat,
Wouldn’t let us
Stay inside the house.
And
I would feel sleepy
But hunger
And mosquitoes wouldn’t let me sleep
And my mother,
Driving the mosquitoes away from me with
One hand
And
Caressing my hair with the other
Would say,
“Have some sleep,son.”
And I would ask her,
“Why are we so poor, mother?
Why is it that we don’t have food
Or a beautiful house?
Why is it that we do not have anything?”
And she would stop for a while
And then
She would say,
“Who said we are poor?
And that we don’t have anything?
Do you see the sky with all these stars?”
“Yes”,I would say.
“All this sky above us,this house,
With all the stars are ours”,
She would say.
And I would ask,
“What about the moon?
Is it ours too?”
“Yes,it is,
But today
We’ve given it to others
For they’re really poor
And they do not have a house
And they sleep on the roadside
In the dark.”
And I would believe her
And fall asleep
In her lap
Only to wake up
By a drop of tear from my mother’s eyes.
“What is it?”,I would ask.
“It’s raining”,She would say
And cover me with her saari
And I would fall asleep again.
And now
Every evening I sit in my balcony,
My old father sits beside
And we both stare at the night sky,
And he says that he feels lonely all the time,
Even though he has everything now.
He misses my mother, I know,
But does not say anything
And I look at the sky,
And the stars and the moon,
And when it rains,
I touch the raindrops
And I think
That
My father should have come
With us to the terrace
Back in those days
When we were poor
And we had nothing to eat at night…