RIVER, I COME TO YOU !

Pulses enfeebled, throat parched, you lie bare:
The plight of a village girl gang raped, swooned.
My childhood's playmate, Oh Manali River:
Gone are your sand- dunes, soft white as a lamb where
I played, raised castles that soon would crumble.
Heaps of mud instead, the sight aches my eyes.

Craze of my teens, the memory is still green:
How you would toss my boat of recklessness
And turn upside down in the mid-river:
Gone are the strength of your savage currents
That’d grapple around my legs, your floods once
Roared through the rains swirling, surging and foaming
To overwhelm the fields: now at the mercy
Of the concrete python straightened across your way.

Once you had followed my great grand father
Steps dancing hips swaying, a courtesan
Splashing water on the way giggling
Upto the threshold of our ancestral home.

After thirty years of separation
I return to you, the prodigal son
Only to witness your shallow current gasping
While struggling to move on. A drop of tear
Rolls down, a subtle ripplet, the river heaves.

Kochi

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