A TRIBUTE TO MY WIFE, MANJU

 

Your silent acceptance,

Your tears tell everything,

That you could not say through the years.

The daughter of a rich Land Lord,

Choosing a home of no much means,

Quietly you loved me and never said so.

All that you cared for was my happiness.

My choice was your choice, my voice your own.

You didn’t dream of a different dawn,

Nor did you ever seek salvation

In the words of any enlightened being,

As in your perception, I was everything;

The meaning and purpose of living

In simple unadulterated conjugal love, 

Dear to one, like bliss divine.

 

While giving you all worldly things

Within my capacity, I kept a part of me

Reserved to myself in my crazy quest,

Hoping at the same time to keep you smiling,

To see you satisfied and cheerful

While you move around me.

Not interested in any other thing, you waited

Silently for that part, my errant poetic heart,

That I thought, you may not take care of.

But you nursed it and cared, I did not see.

You shared all my sorrow and like a shadow

You followed all along the path I fared.

 

Little did I know that it was me

Your lips murmured in silence

When you were all alone.

 

Far and wide I travelled, saw many a hue

As I roamed in my world of imagination

And gathered experiences new.

 

But each time I felt hurt and exhausted,

I came back to you, my loving, artless wife,

And got your cool comfort in all strain and strife.

 

I still remember that fateful day, so sad,

When once in a fit of anger I threw away

All that I had written, all that I had preserved.

 

I was spell bound to see what you did.

You were crying and crying but at the same time

Collecting from the ground those scattered sheets

 

With utmost care, collecting, as it were,

The scattered fragments of myself,

Though you never understand a word of what I write.

 

You nurtured the hope all the years of your life

With your tears, that I would understand you one day,

Since I am a poet of some sort, if not great.

 

And see, the poor poet has taken an entire life

To give due recognition to the infinite love

 Of a simple village lass who became his wife.

 

You have been a part of me, an inseparable part.

Do I need to say “I will do this for you, I will do that?”

No my wife, my mother, my sister; one life is insufficient.

Copyright: Bipin Patsani