7. Children of the mountains

I’d like to end this segment with a poem I wrote for my brother (sunny) on his birthday. I hope you enjoy it.

We are the children of the mountains.
Building mud forts from her soil,
we grew up.
We wandered together,
scrambling up and
skidding down her slopes,
exploring her gullies,
holding hands walking home,
love being our only tether.

Every day a new horizon,
new dreams
and new ambitions:
today to paint a tree,
tomorrow to be free.

We planned revolutions of change
under tamarind canopies
and discussed and mused
until the bats took wing and the night closed in.
We flew kites on the roof of a neighbor’s home:
we were happy, we were sad, but never alone.

Of a piece of cake we made ten parts:
one for you,
one for me,
one for that pretty girl who stole your heart.
The rest were for our friends:
you shared with me even them.

We read stories and wrote our own:
our imaginings of the first rain,
the one we never believed would come.
until it came,
taking away the cracks in the earth,
unfurling our umbrellas: orange, yellow, red

That one year it came so late,
deep in August,
and Hrishi wrote his angry prayer,
threatening the Lord himself with loss of face,
if the drought did not end.
The grass broke the earth; the umbrellas blossomed.
We were thrilled by the triumph of his prayers.
We were how old then? You, twelve? Me, ten?

We fought over little things,
bickered, insulted, sulked,
but when the neighbors’ son came,
with his tricky little games,
as a team we would defend
each other to the end.

And late at night
we would lie
under the leaking roof that was our sky
and the high-up windows that were our eyes,
and sleep. And dream.

There in that broken house are shadows
two, four, five feet long.
They have travelled far off,
but they will come back.
because home is where they belong.
The sun breaks still
through that cracked pane
where we watched the night unfold.
These shadows may fade,
and our bodies may grow old,
But come what may, we’ll always be
now, today, till eternity
the children of the mountains.