GOPI

GOPI

 

Your mother’s pain

on her heart, a load of a mountain

two younger brothers vying to suck her breast

dry, on a skeleton just a divine crest,

much pangs of hunger in the stomach

rags, hardly concealing the buttock,

a woman. a wife/ a mother- poverty -struck

parting her eldest son bearing the shock

that her son would survive to exist

and would stay as a man in our mist,

Your dad knee clad skeleton In search of living

to feed many mouths as a sword on him hanging

wide-eyed aiming at a future fort

Gopi would soon grow young him to support

dance now before me thrilling my spine

when you accompanied me at age of nine

worm- worn emaciated timid boy

from Cuttack to Bokaro all the way.

Today at one of my twilight days

with gratitude when my past I gaze

undisputedly you tower over all

many adorable at whose feet I fall

to convey my gratitude and to pray

because of whom on earth, I could manage to stay.

Hey Gopi! Your story till your teens

serving us are clear on my mental screens.

but then lost your track on separation

again forty years back you appeared in my vision

ready to serve me

“ No I do not require” Ruthless was I

a scene, an act I repent for atonement

that used to hunt me very frequent

perhaps driven by the pecuniary pressure

turned blind to the human values as a divine treasure.

Remember I your coaching to my spouse

the gas stove pressure cookers’ use

when you came to stay with me

for yor food I never bothered to see.

Any services to all my kith and kin

as if you were born to do never did you grin.

A late remembrance of your association

visited your village my sister’s son

perhaps as his babyhood gratitude to you

your family and brothers Ratana Vidya two

found your two brothers old and grown

“ Bhai’s whereabouts to us is not known”

You, your village has forgotten

so also we who long back lost you in oblivion.

Gopi! Where ever you are

whether you are in the earth or in Heaven

or on our nation or abroad beyond the ocean

“ Stay blessed and happy” we pray the lord

with gratitude in my heart where you stay adored.

 

 

Exploited rural poor without land of their own

coupled by the farming as a neglected sector of the nation

produce many Gopis over time only as the human breed

to serve and serve to meet all others’ need

then vanish to the oblivion unlike humankind

again are born to serve the blessed as we continue to find.

They turn refugees, miscreants, drug addicts when they are misled

and turn leaders to mislead and in slums, they spread.

Lord! Pray you to push these into man’s food for wisdom

who in their tours to Neptune find time for them seldom.

 

 

P K Routray

in the service of Lord

 

 

(Gopi is a real character in my life who served us since as a child of nine to mitigate his family needs in 1972.)