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Who am I?
A letter drenched in a river
Tenderness melted into a lamp
a breath spread wide across the sky.
The trinity of mothers is not merely my life
It is my knowledge, my dignity, my destination.
As long as those three endure, I endure.
In their shadow, my existence resounds
like an endless song.
The first sound I heard in life
was not the ticking of a clock.
It was a current
my mother’s word.
That word, slowly, gently,
Turned into a river.
Letters became waves
Emotions became shores.
Mother tongue is a river.
It flows within me.
Whenever I dry into a desert
It returns as memory
And runs through me again.
I can listen, read and speak
In many other languages
yet the tides within me
Rise only in my mother tongue.
A river never forgets its source,
Nor does the mother tongue
Through generations of rocky cliffs
It carves its passage,
Flowing through us, within us,
Without cease.
In a darkened room once
It was not the walls that guarded me,
But a lamp.
That lamp was my mother
however fierce the wind
her love never dies.
It burns more quietly
More brightly.
In her hands my fear dissolved
in her blessings my doubt melted.
A lamp never burns for itself.
It melts for others.
So does a mother
she melts her dreams
To light our future.
Wherever I go
there is a sky above my head
and earth beneath my feet
the sky draws no borders
yet shelters every life beneath it.
The soil that steadied me
Is strength to my steps
Fragrance to my breath
History to my blood.
If we dishonor the sky
our own heads bow.
If we forget the motherland
our very roots wither.
The river does not touch the lamp.
The lamp does not reach the sky
Yet within me
The three meet.
Mother tongue a current
Mother a light
Motherland a vastness
Without the current, my voice would dry
without the light, my path would darken
without the vastness, my being would shrink.
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21st Feb is International Mother Language Day
Image Copyright - Varala Anand |
