Mending the Minds

Mending the Minds

P K Routray

 

My dear Pani Prafulla, Nanda Manmohan,

Mishra Pradipta, Mohanty Guru, Palit Milan

Acharya Gopal , Patnaik Jagdish , Dash Biswambar

and Dash Ramesh, classmates settled at Bhubaneswar!

Never over WhatsApp or emails through the internet

or in our batch get-togethers you, we have met.

Once in a blue moon, except on occasions one or two

Patnaik Rabi and Gopal, Jugal! was never in view.

Overjoyed we are at WhatsApp with your participation

but still eagerly wait we to meet Patnaik uma and Jnanaranjan.

Even in our Two thousand fifteen jubilee meet

you, our classmates settled world over failed to greet.

Our aged hearts have agonized in missing friends in you

cherishing our RENGCOL days, your old relationship we woo.

At these twilight days when friends, dear to heart are falling,

some surviving with kidney, lever, panaches and heart limping

we long and get elated at meeting friends since the college days

when we meet we forget the ailing with teenagers’ craze.

Days are not far when our own will pray for our mercy death

with friends, we will smile even being under ventilator to breathe.

We need friends true to cheer us and stand by us by heart

to make the living happy and peaceful before we depart.

your Rengcol days’ prized friends Janmejay, Senapati Pradipta,

Amal, Arun, Devram, Satysundar and Dillip Purkayasta

have left us for their heavenly abode to join the other departed thirty.

Fifty years have fleeted as a moment since we parted at nineteen seventy.

Our departed friends appear when we quietly close our eyes

The Lord has snatched them from the earth but not our ties.

Together we came to our Alma- Mater at our teens

forgot there the barrier of caste, creed, color, and cuisines,

there grew and matured staying under one roof together

altering the hostels and in four seated room the roommates every year,

sharing the toilets to cupboards, competing over breakfast to dinner

gossiping, grape vining, laughing, fighting but dreaming to be a world beater.

Please recollect the playful time at the back post and check post

lending cycles for a township ride trapping a friend to be the host.

Do not you remember our apprehensions and feeling of being alone?

But with friends managing ourselves we shook off parental protection.

Friends varied in colors, texture, and nature but helped one another

accommodating the frenzies, fancies and some with unique character.

Fickle friends, chattering friends, proud friends, friends with characters many

our tender hearts noticed none then ignoring it as in million pounds a penny.

In life spanning over fifty years after our departure from our alma-mater

we were scattered to earn our bread nurturing our family with a life partner.

Some rose better in their careers, some shaped their offspring better.

Some had lesser luck but managed to survive and smile hiding tear.

Without grudges and grievances, vanity and vengeance we thank the Lord

as we spent ever cherished five years of life with funs and frolic on His accord.

At this last stage of life we seek happiness, peace and a life of laughter.

Swear you tell among all the phases of life where did you get them better?

Pray we for the wellbeing of your offspring wherever they may be

but appeal you to spare them so that your old age burden they do not carry.

We parted our friends and perused our career and nourished our offspring

both jobs being over now with friends laugh, dance, sing and swing.

Now at this ripe age, health being at the Lord's hand, we walk to the helpless days.

Old age home, nursing care, Alzheimer’s disease we apprehensively gaze.

Five decades back friends unknown lightened our burden of parental separation.

Look we must now them forgetting differences to lighten the old age burden.

Pray I you, not to shun the company of your friends of the then golden era

where friendship was carved in tender hearts and minds without complex aura

Sway, swim, swing, smile, and shout with them like teenagers at Alma-Matter

Share the joy, snatch the grief to stay with friends together do not splinter.

Appeal I your spouses to amend their flawed opinions on us

prevail upon their hubbies to join their friend with their sweet sixteen fuss.

 

 

 

 

(We two hundred fifty were together in our Alma-Mater i.e Regional Engineering College Rourkela reading engineering for five years staying together wef 1965 to 70. Now we meet with our spouses. Some remain isolated and stay away. This is a poem composed appealing them to join in this old age merriment.

Names are the names of the author’s friends)