REPENTANT MEMORY OF AN ONAM

Yesterday being ‘Onam ‘ festival day my loved one was recollecting her childhood days’ onams in Bangalore and Thiruvananthapuram. Going to local temple with her friends wearing new dress after a lavish bath, playing thiruvathira wearing the bath towel, duppatta etc. as the set mundu , all such stuff we shared and laughed at ourselves. Nostalgia evaded her on the previous day itself and she took off from College on onam day. A three member family, father at Trivandrum, we in Bangalore, she had to celebrate her onam this time by watching two movies , thanks to Asianet and contacting her friends in mobile and internet. I was busy in office. We made a small sadya . Payasam I didn’t plan because nobody to take. Pappadam in hurry worry I forgot to fry.


Somewhere in my heart an ache started in the evening when she asked me to narrate the onam celebrations of my childhood. But I could tell her proudly that my childhood onams and youthful onams were celebrated in the same way we celebrated your childhood onams. “Now the case is different for both of us. So let us forget it.” I said . She was not to leave me and wanted to know about my school days, half of which she heard from my cousin of my same age studied in same school.. I narrated the way boys used to play the out door game of gambling with cashew nuts instead of cards. As a child viewing such games was my hobby. Once I was hit by the stone indented to hit the cashew nuts in the pit. My forehead got injured. Blood fell on my yellow silk frock, which was considered to be very costly dress those times. One of the teachers washed my wound and frock and made me sit in the class wearing only underwear covering my chest and back by the jute school bags of another two students, held by them sitting my both sides. This is when I was in first standard. She wonders and laughs a lot without understanding the circumstances this happened. Those days the upper caste girls were supposed to cover the full part of their body with good dresses whereas under castes were left to their choice to cover or not to cover. In order to uphold the custom without fail for a couple of hours until the frock is dried in the sun, the teacher made such an adjustment in the case of a 5 year old. That was the kind of moral support we used to get those times. Nuns we used to call adding amma with their names. There were pettirikshamma
( Sr. Patricia) , Rotticossamma( still I don’t know her original name), Placeamma
( Sr.Bless/Blaze), Lusiferamma( Sr.Lucina)etc. Though we got a good education there, they used to reprimand us more severely than other children, because my maternal uncle was a well known communist activist of EMS’s time. A small stream which was to be crossed on the way to school looked like a river for me those days. Me, my siblings and cousins were a group of 10 members from one house to same school. Grandma used to accompany us from home with a stick in her hand to handle the lazy ones. She holds our hand and make each one of us cross the stream after the paddy fields . She was so keen to save from drenching our dress especially. From there we go our own and she goes back home to bring break fast for the labours in the field. By evening she comes up to the stream, make us cross the stream and stays in the field until the labours finish the day’s work. As our grandfather died in her youth, grandma became a very strong woman of those times and used to manage all outside works attached to the land and people of the house while her two sons managed the business. Starting days of schooling, each one of us were unhappy to leave home . I am the one who was most fuzzy. Fear to cross the stream was my pretext to bunk school when grandma is not free. Eldest cousin brother takes charge of grandma in such occasions and his beatings, I still remember, with the same stick grandma used. It resembled the way a shepherd take the lambs to graze. The taste of the very tender paddy inside the bud he plucks and give us on the way is also unforgettable. By the reaping time there will not be paddy on the plants near to the both sides of the small bunds we used as foot path. There were no facilities of communication like present time, but interaction was far open and better. Now how easy it is? But how sophisticated it has become?. Adjust children! Adjust! What else I can tell you. We also feel suffocated. Dear daughtoo, the single girl child, when I restrict your freedom as the situation calls for it, I remember the innocent way we used to enjoy the same freedom that I restrict to you now. I am not protesting, but protecting you by that, because I know prevention is better than cure.

Thus another onam is over leaving the reminiscences of suffocating repentance. No one is happy as much as they deserve to be happy. But all are satisfied within the available satisfaction level. After all and at the least, all are equals on onam day, isn’t it?

BE ALIVE

Be alive and be lively as we live
God’s gift is our life as he gave
Life is to live, love it and live
Never ruin it for the fear of world
Be alive as we live in it for God

Mother earth and our God the nature
The powerful spirits we rely upon
Rely on us for our edicts of ethics
With their nature of parenthood
Be alive as we live life in earth

Let us sow, sow the seeds
Of good spirits and fair deeds
Agree with our mother, the Goddess
To keep her happy for us to be worthy
Be alive as we live a life natural

Worthy be our life worthwhile
Save the lives that fall down
Tumbling, wringing, withering
Wry not on virtues, keep it alive
Be alive as we live for virtues

Love each other and bother least
Whom we love and why we love
Know the virtues, love them more
For we all love to live in love
Be alive as we live in love

There is no time , when escalation
Blows out the lights of welfare
Confrontations are irresistible
Respond fairly as we can
Be alive as we live for peace

Wreckage of truthfulness and evasion
Of good deeds, order of the day
Clarity is in questions alone
Answers are dubious in sly
Be alive as we live in control

Let our life be truthful beacon
Remain lively in truce for justice
Dwell in the spirit of harmony
Live for the spirit of good will
Be alive as we live life truthfully

ANNIE JOSEPH

This poem was instantaneous, when I read the news about alarming suicide rate in Kerala.

Woes of a Chair

WOES OF A CHAIR
I support the plank that bear
Great men or servants and bureaucrats
To do good or bad sitting on me.
I look like a cloned product,
Alike in the offices and dining rooms
Treat or retreat they do,
Doctor or patient I am needed alike
Sitting on me firmly to do .

I am filling the major place of bureaucracy
For them to sink in me mercilessly
To act like an unmoved mover bitingly
To move the files and people immovable
I am respected if I boss over or break over
Once occupied cannot be emptied
Bureaucracy understand my value well
They salute me till retirement
And on emptying they like to forget me

I am offered often to the liked
But not to the needy or tired
Not to the wandering on search of me
But to the one who empties the pocket for me

Carrying the giants I am broken often
They exchange me and get woven
To use again in the same mode
They use me for their comfort.
Since my relationship with my master
is not the one that is woven
Never remember me once got up
Until searched to sit again

My absence is noticed always
I am pushed and pulled mercilessly
To make space to move around
My presence is neglected otherwise.
Politics played for me is unbearable
Oh! What a paradox my fate is?
ANNIE JOSEPH

WHY I DON’T SEE

WHY I DON’T SEE

Narrates my friend, dew drops, green grass,
Rose buds, fragrance, fashion, notion etal
Everything beautiful or dull, beautifully.

I move in the grass, bushes, snow and crevasses
And all in around and across to feel them
No, I see no dew, dawn, dusk , dull or pretty
I wish to bring out in duty though.
Not that they hide from me, but that
we play hide and seek, and I search always
my eyes (inner) are not open to see them

Dew don’t come to me to hug me alone
Dawn don’t wake me, if I act asleep fast
As I move, I splitter dews that glitter
I break them, before see or feel its beauty
So I won’t see them ever utter in nature

My morning pleasure is my need to mend
For a walk on the black road broad to breath
Where sun light can’t reflect rays that rise
Where dew can’t glitter like glass on grass
Where wheels sway long before dawn is on

Bats, rats, cats and cuckoos I search to reach
Where trees , their dwellings are no more
Nocturnal they are and blind I am in mind
Turn off my computer, and turn to woods
Try to open my eyes and look at nature old

I touch the grass smoothly, dew falls slowly
Slowly that I see it’s full blend and splendor
To narrate dawn, dew and all in its duty
Come out of me as I feel them foremost
Not in animation, but in original in nature.

Inherit the feel of it, to cohorts to come
Be not blind to see nature to venture into
narrate and relish in ethics ethnic entire

To know nature to sense feelings felt
Be sensitive to take pain to share love of nature

ANNIE JOSEPH

SAINT

SAINT
Who is a saint?
Saint is not born
Saint is not selected
Saint is not elected
Saint is not made
Then who is a saint?

I ask God and pray
Make me a saint of yours
God asks me why
I reply with a gleam of shy
Praise, prayers to me
Devotion, decoration
Memory, merry making
All I like for my sake
Says God to me then
You are a big ship
Sent to sail through
The sea full of waves
Waves of truth and falsehood
Go and cross the ocean
The ocean of true and false
God says to me

Flag is shown to start
My sail to cross the ocean
The sail of my life starts
Looking at God’s beacon
The beacon of truth
Calling for a truthful life

A saint in my mind
Shaped as a big steam ship that
Sails across the ocean of life
To reach the shore of it
Filling the decks of it
With full of passengers in it

Who is a saint? Is it
One who lives an enchanting life
One who lives an enclosed life
One who does miracles
On death after a torturous life
Or the one who lives a truthful life?

No truth is above
And no life is above
A life that is truthful
No saint is above
And no sainthood is above
A life lived truthfully

ANNIE JOSEPH

GLADIS

Glad was Gladis immensely
Engaged and exchanged rings
Stepmother sent her in hurry to
In-laws to bury her own worry

Withered was she, bothered nobody
Worried in view but vexed anybody?
Room of groom stepped in Gladis
All in soul gay and gaiety show


Talking to trees and watching nature
Gleaming on secrets groom uttered
One and all were good at a glance
Gladly buttered all the souls, Gladis

Aware was Gladis of the stigma
Sticking to her life and soul
Sin of another brute to brood in life
Carried in womb to bloom or whither

Days went on , months moved on
Loving was Gladis to be loved on
For stepmother and mother-in-law
The life in womb was pleasing alike

Good was Gladis, like her spouse
Mind was holy not the womb in body
Seventh was month of marriage
Gladis released womb another

Holy was the womb born in boon
Bane and pain of it like a bomb
Revealed from the womb unholy
Gladis borne for her own folly

Holy to hold, unholy to world
Grew up the younger womb too.
Womanhood became ready
To bear the motherhood steady



Husband of Gladis the darling
Father of her daughter known
Unhappy to be drunkard grown
Himself for the reasons known

Helpless was Gladis for all in mute
Mistakes were in her basic, strange
Fate to be benign and unlucky
Gladis malignant to be defended

By nature the true stepfather
Gladis’s hubby the revengeful
Made the holy young womb
Unholy in her innocent sleep

Guiltless and helpless by birth
At the age of twelve to involve
The younger womb born holy
Revealed unholy by birth of a boy

Unholy is the younger womb in body
Bearing the sin in soul, not dissolved
Making the act in nuptial unholy
To bear another womb or soul holy

Where is the Baby boy dear?
Knowing not your father
Your pappa but branded grandpa
Will you know when you grow?

Where is the fault my friends?
Does literacy or illiteracy make difference?
Does morality or immorality bear the cause?
Which is the route to blot the root?

Let us hope in our hopes of heart
Story will not repeat in family same for
Rendered out from her womb not
Gladis’ daughter another womb

ANNIE JOSEPH

NESTLE

Where is nestle? Where are my birds?
Dreams are cloudy, smiles are dull
Drops of rain are rare, drops of blood shed
How are they wounded, why are they wounded?
Where are they dumped? why are they deserted?
Why are they not flying?
Are the wings wounded for the ants to move?
Where is nestle? Where are my birds?
Turned the clouds to rain
Turned the dusk to darkness
Turned the dreams to lust, to turn
Life of my birds deadly with ruts
Where is nestle? Where are my birds?
Lonely they feel, lovely they move in thirst,
Lusted by oasis never to reach
My birds fly high to die lulled by pleasures
I lose them for the world unknown,
Where is nestle for them to dwell?
Where is nestle? Where are my birds?
Heal the wounds for my birds to fly
To flutter their beautiful wings
To fly and fly, high and high
To search and reach the nestle
To seek love and pleasure at home
Let me be their nest and nestle to dwell
For them to seek and sit, safe and secure
To sing the songs of love and peace together

ANNIE JOSEPH