Hidden veils

Feb, 2015

Today I saw a dignified shame

Hiding behind my couch all stern

She smiled and maintained a distance between

Her honour was in being, a being of none

She thought her silence

Was her gift of love

She respected, she mentored,

In her own house, she served..

Her dreams were many

But her reach not too far

Never showing disappointment

She kept raising the bar ..

Day passed to night,

Night passed on to day,

Obstacles were tackled

Routine followed away

Still little were her remains

Things she could call her own

Her sacrifices were too many

But who would a listen show…

And then one day suddenly

When they asked her

‘What would your longing be?’

She crept beneath the carpet

That answer she couldn’t see

She could have wished she had a better home

With garlands and posies and play

She could have wished she had more time

To watch their childhood not grow away

She could have wished more time with dear husband

To rejoice in the world they were building so neat

She could have wished to have never left her mother

This path was dreary, and without her being, incomplete..

But in that moment when she really sat to think,

What she could call her own

What belonged to her soul within..

The answer had been growing

Only with age blinded away

And if today was the time to speak

There was a lot the heart had to say.

She would like those treacherous years back please

With precious solitude that had been in tow

She would like back the respect for all done

And this time it must show

She would like to live again those days

In a way befitting her life

She would like to put aside all else

And go on, on an identity flight.

She would like to discover

What else she could do,

Had it not been for a perfect house on display

She would like to know

What a timetable could be

Outside the tick-tock of someone else’ days

She would like to know what was there to achieve

Had she not cocooned in the inward shell

She would like to see the life outside

Beyond four walls and companions of dismay..

She would like to free herself of the guilt

Of having left behind those things undone,

She would like herself a freedom to think

Outside the unforgiving long daily rung

She would like her mornings to begin

Only when she was ready to start

She would want respect along with love

For all the happiness rested in your heart

She would want someone to realize

how difficult it was to breathe each day…

The suffocation of being stuck in someone elses life…

To succumb every day to an unknown prey..

But to much of it she knows,

there isn’t anyone else to play that part,

Having left it to another,

This house, this peace wouldn’t be at heart.

Whether duty belongs here,

Or its in a matter of pride to say,

Whatever be the reason,

She has nurtured well enough,

To know these seeds will grow away.

That satisfaction could do a lot

Had this cross road not come her way,

Had somebody not asked again,

‘What of you, has become today?’

This is a tale which is layered with several aspects of being in essence what a woman is – a giver, a provider. Primarily on the grounds of what we have seen of our first generation expat mothers experience in an unknown land where their identity is reduced to being a mere caretaker. The travel from the innate giver to becoming one of whom a submittance is expected, in the same breath losing what they could call unique to themselves in a matrix of circumstances, need of the hour and building a household. Somewhere this is the story of every mother, every home- maker, every woman, who wishes to willingly let go off a bit of her ‘self’ to discover the joy in giving, not knowing when she runs into an endless wheel of produce and is left with much little of her own to linger on.