ON ME

On me

P K Routray

In the photo, me I see as a child in father’s caring arm

with innocent face, enquiring glance and novice charm

having socks and shoes but body being bare with no pant and shirt

embrassing his mother who must have tried to see him smart.

Unaware of the situation around he looks at camera lens,

funny appears the surrounding, he wants to learn and experience.

Sixty eight years hence I have to travel in my memory lane

to catch this moment from the history recorded in my brain

besieged with memories jumbled with events based on facts and fiction,

juxtaposing the dreams, the tales, the thoughts and the extracts of imagination.

To confirm the truth and my hazy recollection now I look at my mother.

Recalling the incident now she narrates as to how I did embarrass her

spoiling, soiling the shirt pant both just before the snap that made her wild.

I pity her “ How did a nineteen year old mother could manage her naughty child?”

Father took me, my mum and her sister kilometers far to a studio

Mother dressed me with the best of my dresses for my photographic show.

But you little me spoiled her plan and savaged the photo’s feature.

None thought that it would embarrass me the bigger of the kid in future.

I cherished the photo as in you I see me as an innocent simple soul

battered in the battle of life failing to  play befittingly the role.

At the fag end of life I beg apology as I could not come up to your expectation

as unlike you here I spent your life concealing failures and doing deeds of ostentations.

( N > B The photo was taken in 1949 when I was less than one year old. This poem is based on my feeling on my childhood me)