Wanderlust...re-visited

This poem was discovered among my daughter’s diaries a few years ago when she was cleaning her room….. A scrap of aged, yellow paper, neatly folded into a rectangle, with her baby scrawl saying “Daddy poem” fell out of one of her numerous diaries and would have almost been swept away, had it not been for the scrawled label.

We opened it and there it was…. I had composed it a few months before our final exams in college….

When she was a little girl, our daughter had this habit of rummaging through Daddy’s and Mummy’s papers and stuff, and then store the things that caught her fancy, in her cupboard.  Good for her and for me, I must say.

Looking back, this was composed at a time when our final semester exams were almost upon us; some campus interviews had taken place, no one had yet landed any jobs, my study partner and I had not yet qualified for any of the interviews because of our marks. There was a pall of uncertainty hanging over everyone as we prepared to move out of college and begin a new chapter of our respective lives. After five years in college, many were in the mood to “just get out there” in order to re-live a whole new experience; to try and “do something”….

Wanderlust

 (composed – 16^th April 1981)

I hear the call of yonder wilds,

As if a siren song –

The haunting tune of the living free,

Their pulse of life so strong.

O ! Take from me this fettered freedom

And let me feel them all;

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The breaking of the surf on rocks,

The salty smell o’ the breeze –

The seething foam and towering waves

Out in the stormy seas.

The cozy nests that sea-gulls build

In cracks in the high cliff wall;

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The tinkle of the little bells

Of cattle homeward bound;

The gleeful sounds of boys at play

In the meadows all around.

The drone of bees in summertime,

The rustle of leaves in fall;

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The solitary eagle in a turquoise dome,

The petrified waves of sand;

The garish beauty of cactus flowers

Adorning the desert land.

Braving fiery storms that blow,

Stand hills so proud and tall –

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The bugle call o’ the early bird

Heralding the dawn of day;

The rustic tunes the farm girls sing

While loading their wagons with hay.

The beauty of the Indian summer

The rain-and-thunder squall;

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

The sparkling rivers of endless flow,

The fields of golden grain;

The fiery beauty of a lonely sunset

O’er a desolate plain.

Never was born an artist whose

Hand could paint it all –

I want not a hearth, I want not a home,

I want to see ‘em all !!

***

Epilogue

My childhood was full of long train journeys across the length and breadth of India with my parents and sister. I guess the long hours spent by the windows of trains as they sped through myriad landscapes find their reflection in the poem above.

Reading this poem after more than three decades of service, involving travels to many a distant land, and matching it with the events of my life during this period, I guess I had this wanderlust in me since childhood….

The thoughts of the sea and voyages were perhaps born out of the numerous stories I had read as a child; I had then never imagined even for once, the amount of air travel that I would undertake in the years to follow. (I am yet to set my foot on a ship, by the way…)

Wanderlust - revisited

(composed – 8^th Sep. 2015)

Night flights under starry skies,

Velvet, diamonds and fire-flies –

Pearls and gems laid out below

‘Tis the cities, as I watch them go;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

Airport layovers – day and night,

People rushing to catch their flight;

Shops and cafes in fluorescent glow

Lovers and dreamers taking it “slow”;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

Deep blue night o’er a sleeping land;

Blood-red dawn across desert sand –

Flying high with the sun so low

That quickly turns into a fiery glow;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

Two-hour sunsets and four-hour nights;

Endless days on morning flights –

Over forests, plains and coasts we go

Over burning deserts and mountain snow;

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

The joy of visiting some place new

Is a privilege granted to very few;

A smile and a nod with eyes aglow,

People turn into friends from long ago –

But my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

All those people, everywhere

Similar thoughts and fears, they share;

Bound by their lives’ high and low

Does not matter which God they know.

And my home and hearth; they

Beckon me, wherever I go !!

***