Dreams To Die For

Looking across through the window

More than three thousand kilometres away,

I envisage the feeling;

The feeling of pinning for the past.

I saw the women of all ages,

Gathered in the five-hundred-year old market,

Perhaps the biggest market

Only for women in the country.

The evocation brought me

In middle of the market,

O! Mother! The creases on your face

Told hundreds of stories,

To keep the fire alive in the kitchen,

To render your husband's liquor,

To send your kids to school,

Wearing a shabby Phanek and Innaphi,

No one can say you are doing less than

The well-dressed delegates.

O! Mother! How the weight of burden made you stoop so low!

No personal life,

No festivals,

No merry-makings,

But one thing keeps you wary

All your life,

Those brutal mongrels will come,

A lathi in their hand,

Thrashing all your vegetables.

O! Mother! Your wages to make

For the day has now gone,

You are crying in a corner,

But unheard.

How will you keep the kitchen alive tonight?

How will you take the beatings from your husband tonight?

How will you bear the protest of your children from starvation tonight?

You wake up every morning

With a dream

To make an earning for the day.