Answers to your questions.....

The third winner of the Blogadda "What Women want" contest, declared July 2, 2010.

Submitted for the Blogadda "What women want" contest



Tired,
worried,
home again
from back breaking work
in six households
she sits,
feet across the threshold,
pressing her knees
in the light
of a myopic moon.

Wondering about
tomorrow,
hers
and her childrens'....
What did she want,
they asked ....





Independence ?
Yes, from loans and disease,
and
enforced
narrow thinking.....

Love ?
She had it in droves
from her kids
and mother;
there was no one else,
that mattered;
the drink and hit types
were lost to history
and
another geography....
and she liked
her new freedom...

Caring ?
A difficult choice
from
amongst sons
who
learnt how,
twelve to a room,
but had hearts
larger than most;
daughters-in-law
who wondered
at the unusual ma-in-law
who sent them
to complete school;
and the newest
littlest additions,
hell bent
on teaching her
to read their school books....

Indulgence ?
Unmatched ,
as her 80 year old mother
bids her
to sit and enjoy
the hot bhakri and pickle
she's made just for her,
coming in
from a rain soaked
slushy afternoon,
and the grandchildren
rushing in
to snuggle
as she sits leaning
against
the one pucca wall...

Freedom ?
She grabbed it
with both hands
when she escaped
with four kids
from a living hell,
populated
with violence,
lies,
alcohol.
and
another woman...

Freedom Now,
to work,
to earn,
decide how
and where,
how much to spend,
for whom
and how,
freedom to say NO,
freedom
to breathe easy
at times congested,
and
most of all
freedom
to dream.

Like Mumbai,
she has the spirit;
enjoying what she has,
cherishing it.
But dreaming about what could be.

She wants
a permanent job
for the boys,
a sensible match
for her daughter,
once scarred
in a misjudged alliance,
admission
for the grandkids
in a school,
with good teachers
and a better future;
and a hope
that sometime
someday
somewhere,
somehow,
they live together
in harmony
in a house
with
a built-in toilet
they can call their own......

Choices ,
did you say ?
She has slogged
and earned
and shaped
lives,
of those she calls her own
She has taught
them all,
and together,
they choose
and fashion
their simple future....

She looks up
at an
immature moon,
preening from all those
pseudosmart poems,
as she leans back
and rests,
a grandkid
fast asleep on her knees.

"You want to know what I want ?
Come tomorrow,
same time,
same place,
right now,
this little chap might wake up....."