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Friday, April 3, 2015

Childhood snapshots - (in the memory of my late father)

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                  Blogging from A to Z [April 2015]



A childhood buried
across the border
a yellow tri-cycle
shared with siblings
a permanent bite mark
on the left earlobe
for an extra dollop of butter
watermelons thrown in wells to cool
delicacies cooking all day
in mud pots on slow fire
radios as magic boxes
with voices trapped
djinns and fairies
who could light a bulb
in Rawalpindi*
 
a school across the river
where first alphabet was Urdu
in black homemade ink
on wooden writing boards
swimming lessons
self-taught in Jhelum**
religion a happy word
and trains that could
one day bring FREEDOM
 
playing hide and seek
on full moon nights
in the cobbled lanes
fields, cow sheds
 
and one day a label
that stuck lifelong
- Refugee
 
He chose a full moon night
to say the final goodbye
 
I'd like to believe
they were waiting
up there
Kartar, Ashfaq
and others whose names
I didn't know
to play hide and seek
around the moon.
 
* Rawalpindi is a city in Pakistan, close to where my father was born in 1934.
** Jhelum is a vast river where my father learned to swim with his childhood friends.
 
 

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The Human Bean Cafe, Ontario

The Human Bean Cafe, Ontario
my work on display there !!!!!