'The Question' - Selected Poem from the book 'Mirror of Time - An Anthology of Poems' by Gautam Maitra
In the star-studded hot summer night, The kid asked me While sitting on the roof, Dad, when I will become a star-like your dad? In such a novice mind, how will I make him realise the play of life and death? Once in a while, sitting at a family get together, he came running down the lane, and sat beside me and asked, why men and women wear different formal wears? Why my aunts and mother carry the red mark of marriage on the border of the forehead where the hair split, but you have none? He was surprised. I didn't know how to explain the patriarchal aggression. One day, he angrily asked, Why some get burnt on death, while others preserved in burial. I told the kid , that’s the death wish. Then he pleaded for favour, papa when I will die, Put me up in the banyan tree in the backyard, So I could chat with the crows and play with sparrows When sun rays would enter my nest. And in the night, when you will switch off light And look at