My Mother Now No More

As living entity, she was in hospital bed for a week

With entangled tubes pipes and IV connectors

Displaying in a   screen the vital parameters

Heart beats with signs of life but brain is seized of matter

But all senses in a state of stillness, black out and stupor

Alas! what an agony befell and doomed us and my father.

In an ambulance zipping through streets of Dharwad

When she breathed her last, the scene I witnessed

Before being brought to home, she was dead.

To bear that she is no more, is painful and hard.

When she moved from Gadag a small hamlet

After tying the knot with a teacher in Dharwad

A Town perched amidst the vales and mounds

She lived a quiet life in quiet Malmaddi, her abode. 

Wife to a professor, mother to four kids

An able and accomplished home maker

Her love and care all through our childhood

Teen hood and to further till late adulthood

Now in her absence I am deeply deprived.

She led a life of discipline, cleanliness, tidiness

her commitment to Sanaatana traditions and festivities

filled with religious fervour do peck  me often times

Her journey well-knit through three generations

Later crowned as queen of fourth generation when

Great granddaughter descended five years ago.

She was the beacon of hope, solace and guidance

Wherever I was, whenever I wished, I used to visit her

Since blessed with birth right that she bestowed me

What I miss now as a daughter, my cherished right

to visit maternal hometown whenever I longed for.

The agony of her loss, beleaguers me most

I took it granted that she is always present

In Malmaddi home, the intuition that I will miss her

now on, haunts me ever whatever may be my age

Although my life will go on, it will never be the same.

                 ......... Narayan Gadagkar