In my dream last night I saw you Mother
Tosssing and turning in a corner of the Valley.
Your heart was restless like dry bamboo leaves in dried winter ditch
As you kept vigil over your children's broken dreams.
You stayed awake when everybody (thinking this barren night
Wouldn't give birth to any future) had gone to sleep.
You stayed alert and the light from your kerosene torch
Refused to die down.
Long suffering had made you so deadly quite like the unpaved lanes
Bylanes which you had been guarding so motherly.

In the summer of anger and discontent, thousands of
Your daughters stood on the rivershore with empty pots.
The river of hope, once had been so full and clean, was now
Only a trickle, meandering through dirty banks and old markets
Where in the evening mothers sold vegetables from
Their kitchen gardens.
This time too, monsoon came with the same old promise of jobs
For the thousands of unemployed souls,
And went away leaving their hands dry and vacant.

Winter nights came armed with guns and fierce eyes, without
Mercy and with the cruet meanness of a dictator.
It drove love like hunted insecured kitten to the darkest deadend of dread.
Hatred spit out of the barrel of the gun. In the long shadows of
Bullets love failed to grow.
Winter roads were trafficjammed with the same old news of extortion,
Kidnappings and killings.
Your heart was once again terror-bitten, and your soul cracked with
Uncertainty.
Blood of your infants lay spattered behind the bushes in deserted fields.
Bullet-ridden lives piled in the gutter which even your years of tears
Couldn't wash down clean.

Mother, dear Mother, your torso bore the wounds of torture,
Your thighs bore the scares of bullets and Army-boot prints, your face
The burnt of labouring in fields all day all season.
Your heart carried thousand memories of bereavements and lost innocence.
Still, Mother, dear Mother, you held your terried children
In your weather hardened arms, you kept your abandoned children
In your lap, you stayed as always, silent and strong neither fleeing
Giving up anybody.
With thousand untold tales of dark nights hidden inside,
You waited for the sunrise.