Homecoming

Always on the road his son was.
The road;
Which lay outside the village
Like a thick black serpent.
A serpent that everyday devoured
some young man from the village
And spat him out
In the cauldron of the nearby town.

Today, the old man is happy.
His son is back home,
Here to stay for a few days.
After many years,
Not in a hurry to jump into his truck
And head back to the town
With the advent of dawn.

Today the child too is happy.
He wants to sit at his father’s feet
And talk,
Just like those days of old
When he, a toddler, lay with him at night
And listened to tales
of kings, queens, princes and princesses,
Of Sindabad the sailor,
Aladdin and his magic lamp
And of the heroes of their clan.

Today, they sat down once again.
The stars which had in the past
Always given them company,
Above the terrace of their house
Had been blocked.
The village had hastily grown;
The town had come riding the snaky road
And taken residence in the open spaces
That the village had offered.
Their little house no longer stood alone.
It had metamorphosed
Into a glitzy bazaar.
 
Under the bright neon lights,
With the lingering smells of the bazaar
Hanging around them,
Their conversation
Ebbed and flowed,
While the night outside,
Moved on the road, on tip-toe.

Copyright @ Goutam Dutta

What do you see # 48 – 21 September’20