AULD LANG SYNE

As she drives her four year old son
To his UCMAS class
She watches him idly play
With his plastic abacus
She recalls, how as a child
She played with a wooden frame
With rows of brightly coloured beads
Not knowing the Chinese secret
Of advanced math power hidden in them.
Yet, she could total up the grocery bill in her mind
She could budget the month to fit the salary
She could put two and two together,
And know, though it should turn out to be four,
Life’s quirks make it twenty- two at times…
Without having undergone special tuitions.

As she watches her kids
Eyes glued to the screen
Jubilantly criminal in sport,
Riding violent rides,
Outsmarting the unknown rivals
On their Play Station,
She recalls her simple rustic childhood
How on lazy days of summer break
With her grandaunt as her opponent
She waged battles in pallanguzhi
By no means a mean task,
Every move calculated
Every seashell manipulated to end up
In a premeditated slot,
To be scooped out
As the winner’s lot.

As she packs her kids’ lunch box
With deep fried samosas, pastries
Ajinomoto rich noodles
Sugar coated doughnuts, crimped potato wafers
And waves off the still sleepyheads
In their school bus
She remembers those hurried mornings
Of gulping down
Plateful of left over rice
Well mixed in thick curds
With dainty salted mangos
(Mmmmm…ambrosia, manna and nectar!)
Before walking three kilometers
To reach the school before the peon
Rings the stentorian bell;
Of opening the aluminium lunch box
At one o’clock and
Scooping out with fingers,
Cold sambhar or rasam rice,
Devouring the very last morsel
And rushing to the row of taps
To rinse the box
Before elbows start jostling
And water, splashing….

How times have changed
She muses
Alien land…alien habits
Alien taste…in food, clothing, routine.
Alien thinking, alien justifications,
Alien kids? Maybe soon, she thinks…
Why am I unable to adjust, she wonders
Why do I cling to my past
Knowing full well that
That past is past
And it shall never be the same
Ever again!