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Poem
"Photographs escort us to hidden recesses of memory and bring before us rare moments lost in time"... By Poet

Flitting through the pages of an old album,
Picked up from an abandoned dusty box, 
I saw a discolored family photo-
All of us posing in front of our old house,
Sweeping me away by a tide memories. 

Among palm fronds and paddy fields 
Stood veiled an ancient structure
Erstwhile the abode of innocence and ease
A house now left empty of its throng.

Sheltering a happy brood, once it throbbed and thrived
Within whose walls, we were born and bred.
Crying and whining, laughing, and prattling
Pampered and cared, we grew as kids.
Corrected and controlled, we grew into adults.
Here we shared a thousand mingled thoughts,
A hundred hopes, dreams, and fears.
Saw the dawn of placid summer morns,
And the descent of cold winter nights.
 
With hurrying feet as Time treaded past,
Migrated we to new terrains and climes,
Like young birds out from their nests depart, 
To wider skies and heady heights.

Sweet home! Earthly haven!
Harbor us once more under thy roof
To soothe the turbulent hearts into peaceful stillness,
To quench the wayward fancy to curl into primordial lineage,
To relish once again that Arcadian bliss
And to splice together the snapped ties.

But, the love of our parents, can it be retrieved?
They sleep content within their cold alabaster cells.
Will they come and flit unseen
To shower their benediction on us
Begotten of their flesh?

As my eyes scan the faces of my parents and siblings
The past undulates and memories stretch incessant
My moist eyes hold back the flood of tears
At the thought of those who left and whose faces
Can no more be caught alive in a frame.

Time elapses, wrought with change
Change! Nature’s irreversible law
The joy that we had in times of yore
Far surpasses the sheen of new opulence and pomp

Around the hearth where Mother blew the flame alive
We sat cuddled round on December morns
Watching lazily the wisps of smoke
Curling up from the damp piece of half burnt wood
And ate the ‘rotis’ right from the pan

Now we have kitchens of gleaming chrome
Costly gadgets and neat tiled hearths
But the food we eat tastes so bland
Lacking something of that homely fare 
Richly spiced with maternal love
And served hot from pots blackened by flames

On hot summer days, we helped our father-
A teacher and a tiller of soil who loved his toil,  
Carry dried bales of hay for the milking cows
and their tawny calves  
Which gave us pails of milk and curd
And heaps of cow dung for our fields.

Memories come clamoring down
Like the lash of cascading rain

Here, I sit transfixed in my new setting,
Visited by recollections sweet and sour
Hesitant to encounter the unpalatable truth
That the pleasant fields I once walked over
And the old familiar faces, I love to look on 
Are gone! Gone forever, never to return!
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