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Confluence of Mother Day with his son’s birthday

Mothers down the years have influenced poetry writing. Notable among them in India was Muslim Poet, Raskan, who somehow developed devotion to Hindu God (Lord Krishna) to the extent of rendering poem after poems in His name. It was his mother, as the folklore goes, who suggested him to use common language instead of Persian he was quite good at.

As I understand from website news, first tutor for Keats was also his mother.

In fact, one gets first letter of language from mothers only and she is the one who helps first a child to take his or her first foot forward. It is she who molds one’s walk or the gait.

I never knew that recapitulating her teachings and thoughts about time with her would result in poems, that too in English …a language she hardly spoke but could make out what other guy is talking about, thanks to her old experience of English-speaking people at home.

Mother's Day in 2017 was sadly on Sunday, the 14th of May (14/5/2017) which is my birthday and I lost my mother last year on April 9.

She had a flair for life and she lived it fully till the age of 87… always insisting on moral order not far away from humanism and her own religion. But at the end she had laments which can be expressed in verses below:

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Even though fighting for the freedom of India from British Rule, my father ironically got his first job in a once-world-renowned British MNC. Over the years, he had sold company’s medicine which included one for epilepsy.

He never imagined that one day same malady will strike his last son and was aghast to recall his training to the effect that disease was incurable and would require life-long management. But the medicine had its side-effect of creating suicide syndromes. One day I began weeping and asked him to start his medication. Not convinced with my reason, he did try to argue with me but failed.

He immediately began dabbling in alternate system of medication. He gave his medicines but instructed to carry on medicines suggested what our family physician had suggested. Latter medicines never succeeded stopping fits, but combination of modern medicines with traditional variants did wonder and in a flat one month succeeded in stopping fit altogether for all time to come till this year. No less was the untiring efforts of my mother who did all nursing and kept alive in me the faith in god and my father’s medicines.

In fact, I was always flummoxed to notice later that, barring three weeks, I never needed any allopathic medicines at all.

It was only recently when I saw the video of renowned Doctor from India B.M Hegde, I could know the reason as to why my father’s medicine worked.

A friend of mine cited WHO study which found that western system of medicines was as good as any other systems: Tibetan System of Medicine, Chinese System of Medicine, Integrated Chinese System of Medicine, Hereditary System of Medicine (Father tells son and so on), downright Quackery (Registered Medical Practitioners).

One indeed wished to castigate him for creating a no-hope situation when he goes on to add that neither surgery nor medicine helps body heal itself. It is your body’s immune system that will decide the healing. Then he goes on to tell that it is tender-love-care (TLC) that helps fire one’s immune system. Sympathy and empathy are the best tools towards this end.

Obviously Florence Nightingale did much better job in healing wounded soldiers than more glamorous doctors or surgeons. There is lot of scope of hope for everyone in the society to handle suicide-prone ones. My another poem titled Dilemma of Death (Why favour it ?) no wonder attempted to reflect all these reasoning. It tried to reason with suicide-prone one that there was no heroic in death and it is life which gives lot of opportunities of heroics.

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To my humble mind, parents are the best version of gods and goddesses because they are hallucination-free. But, are’nt we busy elsewhere and forget them easily.

My extra attachment to my parents is borne by the fact that I am alive today due to their joint pain and pang about my health and life. I am alive today solely because of their joint venture and exercises for my healthy life.

As it happened I got afflicted by a disease which dogged Alexander and Napolean …notwithstanding the fact they were World Conquerors.

While my father got busy consulting Allopathic doctors, my mother began roping in occultists and astrologers to try bring immediate relief to me. But disease was threatening to be life-long and hence the intake of medicines.

To find a cure for my ailment, my father even began dabbling in alternate system of medicines.

As allopathic medicines were making me feel worse, taking cue from his daily success in handling medical problems of his patients with sweet globular pills –call it sweet pills if you must – I decided to switch over to his care despite his vehement protest.

But -- lo and behold! -- malady stopped repeating and thus began the unprecedented saga of MEDICINE-FREE HEALTH with no end in sight still. At 61, one kilometer walk and 5-7 kilometer of cycling is no problem

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Let us forget for a moment all the popular stories of Koh-I-Noor and concentrate only on preciousness it imparts to British Crown. Looking towards individual family scene, one would find only one persona serving as Koh-II-Noor: MOTHER.

As true maker of family, she readily agreed to hand over headship to husband she gets married to and silently went about collecting jewels in his crown. Indeed, when a women becomes wholesomely a mother, she serves NOT ONE BUT THREE generations in a family,

Finding it that way within my own family, I celebrate Mother Day on May 13 which is marriage day of my parents on account of which alone her three boys and two girls came into being. Call it MY MOTHER DAY.

Mother's Day in 2017 was sadly on Sunday, the 14th of May (14/5/2017) which is my birthday and I lost my mother last year in April 9.I never knew that recapitulating her teachings and thoughts about time with her would result in poems, that too in English …a language she hardly spoke but could make out what other guy is talking about, thanks to her old experience of English-speaking people at home.

She had a flair for life and she lived it fully till the age of 87… always insisting on moral order not far away from humanism and her own religion. To my humble mind, parents are the best version of gods and goddesses because they are hallucination-free. But, are’nt we busy elsewhere and forget them easily.

PREAMBLE OF POEM

Let us forget for a moment all the popular stories of Koh-I-Noor and concentrate only on preciousness it imparts to British Crown. Looking towards individual family scene, one would find only one persona serving as Koh-II-Noor: MOTHER.

As true maker of family, she readily agreed to hand over headship to husband she gets married to and silently went about collecting jewels in his crown. Indeed, when a women becomes wholesomely a mother, she serves NOT ONE BUT THREE generations in a family,

Finding it that way within my own family, I celebrate Mother Day on May 13 which is marriage day of my parents on account of which alone her three boys and two girls came into being. Call it MY MOTHER DAY.

Mother's Day in 2017 was sadly on Sunday, the 14th of May (14/5/2017) which is my birthday and I lost my mother last year in April 9.I never knew that recapitulating her teachings and thoughts about time with her would result in poems, that too in English …a language she hardly spoke but could make out what other guy is talking about, thanks to her old experience of English-speaking people at home.

She had a flair for life and she lived it fully till the age of 87… always insisting on moral order not far away from humanism and her own religion. To my humble mind, parents are the best version of gods and goddesses because they are hallucination-free. But, are’nt we busy elsewhere and forget them easily.

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English literature is no doubt adorned by many GREATS who continue to shine bright even today. They still mold the psychology not only of English-speaking nations but other nations through translation of their works in prose or poetry. Be it developed nations or otherwise, their sway is beyond any challenge.

But there would be many more who died unheralded and unsung with some quite young. They did not have means to get their works published or to have their works spread out far and wide. Lacking networking, they naturally remained confined to their city or even few clubs or close family circles.

Fortunately, with onset of electronic revolution, one can publish poems on the web. One can get his works noticed, read and appreciated far away from their hometown. Take example of myself who lived in a state of India where people still pronounce "very" as "bhery".

Yet I could get my poems pasted on poems-web like Allpoetry and get much-required booster dose of sincere appreciation hitherto not at all hoped or imagined by me in my native place.  

However, it has its own problem which can be called intellectual in nature not any technological glitze.

I had been quiet a “shy poet" writing poems in copies left unused by my daughter and then keeping them in cupboard. Barring closed family members or family friends, I never shared them with anybody else.

It was quite late when I began placing few couplets on my Facebook Account. Emboldened somewhat by responses, I joined in 30.4.2017 world-wide forum of a poetry website called allpoetry.com albeit little bit afraid and nervous of world'stage.

But I am quite happy to note today that inbox of my account in the said website reveals my overall scorecard at 30720 and ranking goes up to 110 in a readers’ population of 500000. On closer analysis I find about very small portion came from contest and bulk from commenting on others' poems which is mandatory to any entry in a contest.

This clearly meant to me the general public in fact helped me achieving a somewhat scorchy pace of scoring in 15 months.

I can not demand a better sample survey than this. Further, as the comments on my poems came from big-wig and fully established poets, my confidence as a poet went from strength to strength.

With a happy and strong mind therefore I wish to go ahead and publish my first book, Layman's Lyrics. Fortunately, Allpoetry will help me write Back-Page of the said book. Writing  Forward or Back Page would be easier.

So far I had not decided to be your paid member, because I did not wish to avail bonus points that paid membership offers. I wanted to know raw or virginal value of my poems.

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This may be the fourth of “pentology of poems” on my mother whom I quite sorely miss now, primarily because Mother Day last year coincided with my birthday (14 May).

If I am alive and kicking, hale and hearty, I know whom to give credit. Hordes of poems and prose in their memories are nothing. Even success in realizing the ambition of conquering world – a la Alexander -- would have proved to be nothing. Thanks to the benign effect of their parenthood, I cannot think of subjecting world to any war …even if I can.

In fact I tried to give a new data to women, instead of those (36-24-36) they had been forced to live up to since time immemorial. New data is no less beautiful as that neatly sums up loyalty quotient to a child. When latter is about to go to school(6), she is there. When the year of great biological upheaval comes (16), she is there, too. She departs only when the child has fully matured (61).

Children and women of the world should both thank me, eh?