My Alma Mater

My Alma Mater

P K Routray

NIT, Rourkela my Alma Mater,

with love and pride I proclaim, as my second mother.

My gratitude to her, superior to my mother, I owe forever.

As did my mother she also trained me holding my finger

to walk in life with values, valor and wisdom

through theories and practices imparted by her caring system.

From professors to peers, from seniors to juniors

from assistants to attendants, from nut sellers to dry cleaners,

at class rooms, at restaurants and at cinema halls

we learnt our lesson at all places and from all

to face the tribulations of life with heads high,

never in life at any situation we did ever fight shy.

When I am forlorn with tension and strife

at this twilight phase of my life

I feel relieved recollecting the pearls from my memory lane

with the incidents that all appear pleasing devoid of any stain.

This lures me to go half a century back to those hay days

brushing bright my fading memories with incidents that blaze.

The fickle deeds of my immature friends

hearty laugh now in me those incidents lend

when I see their stature of immense maturity now.

I treasure their immaturity when them I meet, I show.

Then together we laugh with childlike earsplitting sound.

Forget we that we are too old and our coffins are around.

Together we travel back to her cozy loving lap

forget we ourselves and in her lap we take a sweet nap.

.