Mother

 

So many things exist, to whom

one must shed the pungent sense of self,

But the murky self always neighs,

Making a nimble, smart, selfish, social dummy.

 

Stretch such things till the stars,

Whom our desires turn to dust around our feet,

Although measurable not,

Mother is but the loser most.

 

Machine is this society,

Operates on input-output principle,

Vary the losses among different relations,

Ever-giving mother is but the giver biggest.

 

All her relations take it through:

Parents as the ‘other’s property’,

Outshines husband as the hope last,

And children fatten on her maternity.

 

Mother of pearl she is,

Harder the shell, the better it is,

One day, sulks which empty, the pearl gone,

Suffers she with the hollow title of an ideal mother.

 

Most imbalanced is her equation,

Fattest is the oaf on the opposite;

Melts her in childhood,

And befools in his youth.

 

Mowed down in the old age,

Obsolete and ignored manifold,

Dies she before herself,

Without any solace even from the past.