A Friendly Felicitation

A Friendly Felicitation

P K Routray

AG! Amidst friends and their families you stand

with a satisfying smile an award in your hand

All awards deserve congratulation

Hence accept mine as to multitude one addition

It may be a tenth award that for your work you got

Friends smile as laurels to them you have brought.

To a friend and class mate I must tell my heart out

as our bondage transcend over hug and hate, love and bout.

Reminded it me of our eleventh result

where you bagged a prized third spot

The topper met his premature end

nothing big to boast he could do for his friend.

Killed in a far off place shrouded under mystery

for us he is lost and is part of our batch mate’s history

The second boy is lost in oblivion

Doubt I as to whether he could touch our ambition.

You may recollect our essay on “our life’s goal”

where we used to write teen agers dream and future role

one was to be a scientist touching the sun and moon

but in struggle for existence this dream met its doom.

You were left from the lot to translate the dream and bring the laurel

But these awards you got are nothing for our pride to swell.

From stockholm of Sweden to Soochana bhavan

our batch has failed to get the dreamt felicitation.

Sorry my friend! Old age delirium forced on me these thoughts

Excuse me, let us together do something for the poor who rots.

(NB  Proff L M Das is my ‘AG” a name to establish a sweet relationship between two friends at teen age in 1965. Proff Lalit Das is my class mate and on final school examination he stood third in the entire province of Orissa. He is now professor in IIT Delhi and is working on hydrogen as a fuel for automobiles and has been bagged a no of awards for his work. This poem is my expression on him being felicitated yesterday.)