The Winter Dawn of My Village

 

My village under cold, foggy clouds,

Lives, dallies in the wintery days,

The beholder of bare earth and smiling soil

and still closed to the rampaging world,

It’s a small corner of dew, mist, frost and all:

Birds, animals, villagers all surrender to the chill,

They too carry icy shades within:

Uninterested and not much conscious of the ‘hotty modernity’.

 

The dawn taking a yawn after a night frosty,

Like a curvaceous damsel,

after a dreamful, sweet night,

arms stretched to the vigorous pull of youth,

reddish lips in a tantalizing twisted pout,

and breasts firm against any overture uncouth,

Her dreamy eyes shine with maternity universal,

Ready to save this world from the doomed hate,

Her eyes full of love, smiles and dreams.

 

The westerly breeze sashaying over the budding wheat

like a dusky, nimble-footed beauty,

The soft touch of her heels on the earth—

soothing, assuaging, healing and comforting,

And the wheat spikes open their eyes

to the maternal touch,

Like an infant moves its wispy, sparse eyelashes.

 

Arrogant crows fly out of the village,

To those dense plantations afar,

With wings cutting the saffron rays,

Cawing labour they will engage in the whole day

and return with the smell of twilight among tired sunrays,

Choosy parrots fly to tastier trees,

Mother nature has extra-pampered them:

The vagrant beauty of colours red and green,

Even nature seems favouring them

more than the blacks,

So they fly in the opposite direction from the crows,

And why not?

Closer they are to nature

than the rookies showing many characters human

in being retentive, querulous and cunning,

So the greens fly higher than the blacks.

 

Wool-laden toddlers waddle along the streets,

Like little Eskimos,

Their mothers put extra woollen layers on them:

Maternal care swaddled around them,

While they sneak away like tiny explorers

to see a bit more of this world,

Their aged grandparents, their exact analogues

on the other side of the slope,

warm their fragile, old bones around hookahs in chaupals,

Hollow cheeks buzz with chuckle and logic simple,

Far from the warmth of gushing youthful blood,

They are mere fractions of life,

trying to integrate the group

and form a still-meaningful complete integer,

to live with at least that much of life

that at least would comprise a single, bubbly youth.

 

The village beauty smiles behind her thin veil:

The moon behind a fluffy curtain of soft clouds,

The sun peering over the cloud’s edge,

The star smiling from the farthest distance,--

The sweet enjoyment of ogling at lotus in hazy waters.

The hurried gait to finish her household chores

looking a bit odd on her fine, work-honed curves,

Her tipsy, honeyed ogles,

potent to infatuate the hardest heart,

just fall on crude work,

The locks of hair with style simplest,

The envy of metropolitan beauties of great care,

Worry not o damsel,

The virgin soil of the village

dances around your work-beaten heels;

a chilly breeze kisses your rosy cheeks;

The tiniest particles of the mist cling

to the single lock out of the veil.

And the sun struggles to rise in the east,

Only to look at your shadow moving graciously.

 

Yes, such is the winter dawn!

Saffron rays cut across the fog,

Gobble up the last traces of the night;

It comes to my village

like a daughter practicing ‘nature’s care’,

right from her birth in every relation.

 

The rising sun will dry away the dew, mist and frost,

Seedlings straighten up; the burden is off!

Bravo! Every seed off the peasant’s hand

fights nature to feed the nation,

Salutes! The farmer’s green paint splashed around.

 

Icy vapours in the village pond

shelter the migrants; many from the Himalayas,

Exiled by the snows,

they live happily, warmly here,

This dawn is proud to host the familiar

crane couple, ducks, pelicans, herons and many more.

Such is my village at dawn,

Ready to go and almost self-sustain,

So few are such places, elsewhere!