Please Excuse Me

Please Excuse Me

P K Routray

“I was twenty-four, you were fourteen

each other’s face we had never seen

till we were united in nuptial knot

by our parental choice that upon us they thrust.

But our love flourished under stress and strain

together we had thanked them time and again

as since then we had stayed glued together

as if in heaven we were made for each other.

Surrendering my bachelorhood I was identified as we

True to the Hindu tradition you lost your identity in me.

Often we fought, quarreled driven by the necessities of life.

but when we were close to each other we forgot the strife.

Together we spent our time sweating hard in our land lord’s land.

Cherish I the time when we danced together holding each other’s hand.

The warmth, the softness of your loving hand for ever I long to hold on

but it is now a dream and that life with you was as if for me an illusion.

When I slipped for my pegs of drinks and returned penniless and drunk

hurled you abuses at me at top of your voice crying blaming your luck.

Slapped I had you many times urged by then a wild beast within

but after a day or so, forgot we and by you mostly I was forgiven.

You carried our daughter in your womb and still worked undeterred for income

from house hold chores to field labor, in fact your endeavor was awesome.

Jhili! I love you; I felt pity for you but I was helpless witness to your plight

concealing your pains nursing me and our darling daughter night after night.

I could not express my gratitude to you when you were alive

as I never expected that cruel God would snatch you from me so early in life.

Today I am alone carrying your dead body on my shoulder

where once your sobbing head was resting to calm both of us together.

Our daughter is dried of tear and looks at your body with timid eye

She does not know the truth of this world that man is born to die.

But this truth has come for her prematurely orphaning her at tender age

None can nurture her being her friend guide holding her handat evry stage.

Hey Jhilli! You are silent on my shoulder not in your usual self inciting me for a goal

or fiddling my masculinity, advising me to mend but wailing to safeguard my sole.

We were born poor, lived in poverty as to mitigate it our joint efforts were too low.

where can I get money to take your body in a coffin to a grave yard with pomp and show?”

(Recently in Odisha, India the body of his dead wife was carried to a distant cremation ground by her husband accompanied by his daughter.)