Sitting on the edge of the globe by the sea
I struggled to give shape
To the swarm of ideas that besieged me
By giving a name to each one
And forge it into words.
The sea stood before me like a complex lexicon.

Just as the child up there
Perplexed as to what to do with the dry sand
I was lay- as what to say and how.
But slowly
Taking cue from the child
Who made a clean slate of the dune
And started writing her newly learnt words and figures
I tried to figure out sifting the ideas through images from memory.

I had a very faint memory
Of my village school master
Holding my index finger
And scribbling the alphabet in sand
Uttering each letter aloud.
When I recalled it
I felt the burning sensation on my index
And sucked it inadvertently.
Strange!
Where did this sensation nestled
In my body hibernating for almost half a century
To swell up alive all of a sudden!

That child’s keen eyes
Flair for playful learning
And the desire to express and excel,
The comrades of good education,
Had raked up some disturbing questions in me:
How long would she enjoy this freedom?

Tomorrow, before long
She would be shut out
To the wonderful dawns and dusks.
Her learning time would trespass
The bourns of classroom
And creep into her sleeping hours

Quarantining her with her books
As the hour hand kept watch over her.
She would be spoon-fed
Literally and figuratively
And don’t ask about play and fun
Which she could only dream of.
She would win accolades
Whenever the barometer touched hundred
And would by psyched up to think
Life is nothing without ranks.
Her simple pleasures would be put on ration.
She should finish her homework first
If she were to watch a cartoon film
And would have to con a poem
If she were to attend on her pet dog.

She would no longer be afraid of ghosts and specters
As she would be of failure
And this octopus of fear stretches its tentacles
Into her childhood
Into her marks sheets.
A fall in rank from two to three
Would let loose all Hell
Driving her parents hysteric.

She would be ‘Bonsai’ed in that house-pot
To grow in darkness photophobic
Never to breathe fresh air,
Never to grow in the open to stretch far and wide
To house and shelter
From classic to itinerant ideas
To enrich herself
And her surroundings.