India, my India, how I remember you.

Not as some soldier or wide eyed tourist

awed by your ancient culture –

and your milling multitudes.

Nor fascinated by the riches of a maharaja,

horrified by mutilated beggars in the streets

or shocked by the teaming destitute

that throng the Kashmir Gate.

No I remember you as a child, a schoolboy

accepting all as part of life,

a glimpse of what made India a wondrous place.

A place I love so deeply in my heart.

 

This patchwork quilt of colorful people,

gentle hill folk, fierce warriors,

quiet villages, bustling cities, deserts,

plains, jungles and rolling hills.

Stretching from the great southern ocean

to the ramparts of the majestic Himalayas

that thrust their way upwards,

till cloaked in snow and crowned with clouds,

they touch the northern sky.

 

I sit and dream about those days spent with you.

They seem so real.

Surely I can touch a Banyan tree

or taste the spicy sweetmeats

from the vendor in the street.

Women, picking tea, chatter on the hillside,

while others carry water home,

in red earthenware chatties,

balanced on proud heads.

 

In my minds eye,

buffalo still drag the plough through fields.

Kites wheel overhead, ever watchful for carrion.

And I can walk in peace,

the warm sun at my back

or pluck a pear that overhangs the road.

Tears sting my eyes to think of friends

I left so long ago, before the folly of Partition.

Where are they now?

Those who taught me to understand their ways

and how to play “Goolly Dunda” on the maidan.

 

Though my tongue no longer

spills the lilting language locked within

my blurring memories.

Still my heart aches to scenes

that float behind my eyes.

Bright glimpses of another world,

fleeting flotsam on the river of time.

 

David Garlick, Victoria, December, 1992