A place that was home, that street that held my world!

 

A place that was home, that street that held my world!

Neera

 

A place that was home,

that home that was my world

Is still somewhere as I left it!

 

I can still see that street of seven houses

where my childhood is

still clinging to each door,

or hanging with my mother’s washing

soaking in the sun, and

floating in the wind.

That massi, that Raju’s daadi

that noisy and nosey auntie Patialan

with four kids

sitting on the sill

shelling peas and

shouting comments, that

I hear still!

 

I hear my friends playing in the street

As I topple the seven shiny tiles with my rubber ball

and running away madly and they chasing me all

Calling "Pithoo pithoo pithoo",

I can still hear and the sun is still setting

and my mother’s still calling me home!

 

I can still feel the rush that I felt

Can smell the almond fragrance that I smelt

And strange desires

like unknown neighbours, where met

me at every nook and corner of that street

some passing by me, brushing against me

and some looking at me through each window

like prying eyes in the neighbourhood

as I pass through the garden of my youth!

 

I can still taste the tears I shed

And the sighs that bled

my heart

filled with the pain of first love

In my dreams, in my memories

there is still each and every imprint

Nothing has changed!

I can still feel the pain and the pleasure

that were to come

Hear the laughter and the tears that

were to become

Tokens of our love

I still hear the songs we sang

And the bells at the temple door that we rang

I can read every word of that last letter

that changed everything, took us apart

and left a hole in my heart  never to be filled.

I thought!

 

I lived and found love again,

And can still feel the fulfilment that filled every part that was to be filled

Still glowing with that bliss and remembering how I wanted to clinch

each and every wave of time that brought that bliss

and shut my eyes!

But happiness is slippery as sands

and time a flowing river that never still stands!

 

I can still see the falling seasons and

Feel the changing winds of that time

That brought my dreams to fruition

but then also tolled the end to what was mine,

Ended what was known, and changed what was me!

 

Now leaving everything behind

looking at new memoirs

to build

in a new country, in a new world,

I still smile at what was

and feel the pain of what was never

to be fulfilled!

                   

This street is not of seven houses that I knew

My childhood memories aren’t here

And songs of my youth are

in a language not spoken here!

The desires, those dreams have no value here;

it is a different currency!

I still feel homesick for what I had,

And my new memoires are

still in their infancy

 

That life that I left behind, but that,

I know is no more lives on in my memories!

 

That place that was home,

that street that held my world!

That I left behind hasn’t changed a bit

But I have!

But what I was, that still lives somewhere

in my memories

In my songs, in my dreams

It lives in me!

(Presented at the 2015 SWF)