By Ananya Mahapatra
Listen to this song in my heart,
Like the moon and the stars,
Like me, and my brothers
The words wander under a lonely sky
Seeking the scent of my motherland.
I found life, in my mother's breast
This song was born on my mother's lips.
Her words are a witness of my green grass,
My red earth, my pale brown night sky,
That throbs like an aching heart, in a home far away.
These words that came from my mother's bosom
Are heard in the flutings of our cuckoos,
In the croonings of our mynahs,
In the warble of the parakeets.
Even the crickets rhyme their songs to her tune.
I sing her songs while I work.
The drilling machine drowns the music of her soul.
This city is a different kind of jungle
Rushing headlong with reckless hunger.
This city is a fortress, guarded by sewage-chugging moats,
With smoke-spewing chimneys that turn the blue skies black.
This city is a stretch of endless tarmac seas and asphalt shores,
Gleaming concrete towers with glitzy neon signs.
I build this city with my brothers - brick, by brick, by brick.
I sleep on the footpath and stare at her buildings.
The buildings we can only build, but never set foot in
The highways we must cross by foot, scurrying like ants,
If the city locked down, snapped shut on its hinges
And we found ourselves evicted from the hovels,
We have learned to call home.
I stare at the world I make, with my bare hands.
A world I can create but cannot touch.
A world of mirrored windows that hides its riches
And reflects to me my dust-streaked face,
My callused hands, my bare feet.
I look at my clothes in shreds. I hum my mother's song.
It's my only compass that points towards home.
And I remember her words when I am lost
When I become a stranger to my own
To my green grass, the red earth, the blue river
The brown star-studded night, the birds and the crickets.
When I have squandered when I have lost
When the little that I have, is taken
In these strange shimmering lands, that are not my own
That can never be my own.
When I am starved, stoned, or ravaged,
I hum my mother's song.
For, these are words that came from my mother's bosom.
Her words will guide me home.