By Sidharth PK
I realized that my mother had shared her destiny with me. She is life’s longing in the time when adversity is turned into opulence. I had lived watching the world my mother shared with me. I turned twenty-seven last August and I turn back to find life is fixed upon reality. There were moments when I had to follow her, to know the world in many meanings.
Mother encouraged me to see the perfect lines that were drawn in the phase of reality. The real world was everywhere and I had to look into it every time. I was a child with a curiosity leading to the discovery of the diary once upon a time. I read out some poems, I cherished them as I can’t tell whether they were written for me. I read out, I saw her unpublished world in my hands and I didn’t know what to do, so I cherished them like memories. I took the poems to my heart where it spoke of her emotion written in language. Later I cultivated my own poems after it was published in 2018, that took off.
I received my earliest support from my mother when I developed an interest towards poetry. She brought me books of the classical age, the romantics, as the literal world was empty like my mind. I was innocent like many children, I didn’t know Shakespeare, I never got a chance to befriend Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage nor Milton’s Paradise lost. I didn’t know how to start a poem when I read many of my mother’s craft. I developed no rhyme nor prose in my teenage years, as everything I thought was already written by others. I was lost like a star among the clouds.
It had to be my mother’s dream to become a writer which I can only write today. She never thought about it for many years, could she become a writer at all, does she have any choice? She just chose my father as her husband and me with my brother ran through her mind. We two were sheltered in her womb for some months. And we saw the day that was born along with us. It had many events, like former Prime Minister Vajpayee was elected, and I add to tell my mother that 15 August is the day I wished to be born, as you gave birth on 10 August.
The picture was clear that it was not my mother who planned everything, including my birth, after I was born, with two hands and two legs and had to crawl for some time till I was able to walk at the age of three. Mother had intentionally scared me to fall asleep with the spooky. I grew up with her stories in my imagination. She spoke of the ghost that had two fangs, the nightmares and the hound. I was frightened till I reached the age of twelve, as I began reading some books. My mind had thoughts that came like the wind of seasons.
Mother developed the first interest in me, the interest that later colored my wings and my poetry. I wrote a line with that, and wrote again with my mother’s ideals. It was the beginning of discovering myself with the rest of everything that I had an interest in. I learned a few sums, the history of the world in textbooks and some school poems. I never befriended Archimedes while in school, history was never thought of in boredom. I had managed to get to know some historical figures who had no idea that they had been etched in the pages. It was plain and simple to learn Gandhi and others who gave us the freedom we needed by 1947. Mother schooled me well in the readings she gave, which shaped me well. I was not known to literature, it was not my pen, and I fell into it like an apple that falls into the basket. Knowledge was everywhere, free to be used, gained and packed off in letters.
I had confidence once I was prepared to face the world, without a smile or hesitation. I was prepared by the womb that nestled me for months in life. Every day was nourished like food that was added to my growth. I gulp wisdom to see it and confidence to go over stream the rivers I cross. I had to cross a few rivers in life, which were selected by myself and my confidence had been checked some times. It was not breaking fully, as I rode o’er again. I wrote again with the same interest as fully as ever, to make a poem by my pen to the paper. It rhymed with my mother’s inspiration behind the scene. I saw it, my lines getting hued with similes and other metaphors. It was soft like my mother’s touch.
I saw my mother giving her sacrifice out like burning out in flames to make my day and night. The stars were also my mother’s own creation in every aspect. She was my first teacher to teach me, and I went to school to learn. I was clear she had the goodwill to educate me and brother, in the system of schooling. I learned a few lines from my mother’s poem while she wrote in her youth, it personified her womb where I heard my voice echoing along with the ripples found evidently in the ocean of life. She carried me for months and left me open to the light. I had to leave her womb with a new name, with a new life and a new gesture.
