Pritam's Blog
Social Distancing Is Good. So Is Social-Media Distancing
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, maa?
Why is it that we don’t have food
Or a beautiful house?
Why is it that we don’t 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 by the road
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 he 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…
My mother is very much alive and this poem (is it a poem?) has nothing to do with her. I wrote this piece titled My Father Should Have Come With Us years back when I was in a certain mood.
Anyway, I was just telling my mom that I sold one of my paintings for 12k bucks. She just had a glance at the painting on my phone and she was like, “How come people buy your paintings but not Madhab sir’s? He is so good. Ask him to draw anything and he will draw it…”
Madhab sir was the art teacher who used to run a small art school for kids in the neighborhood. He used to come to our house too to teach my brother. I remember when I was in Class 11-12, he guided me to make a couple of paintings. I had to stop as art was a waste of time for someone preparing for entrance exams. You see, it’s important only for kids so that parents could boast of all the extracurricular activities their little ones are engaged in.
Anyway, I asked maa, “Can he paint something that you cannot ask him to paint? Something that cannot be expressed in words?”
She looked at me for a while. She seemed to have no idea about what I was saying. And I don’t blame her. She never had the time or scope to even think about art. And yet she said, “Yes,” reassuring that it’s from my mom that I inherited my arrogance.
For some reason, I wanted to give her a hug. But I didn’t. Social distancing, you see.
I came to my room. I started going through my old posts on Facebook. And I stumbled upon the above poem - it’s one of the few poems written by me that I like…
And I realized, it’s good that I had blocked my mom on Facebook. If she had read this poem, she probably would have thought that I wished her dead…
Social distancing is good. So is social-media distancing.