As the Gulmohar Tree Blooms

It was what we called the seasons of play.

Depended on a lot of things,

Our mood, the number of children, the light of day.

Energy called for Bomb Parts,

Two children--a game of king and queens;

In the mornings we hid behind cars,

At night, gang-wars till the screaming almost burst a kid’s spleen.

A bit of our childhood, almost a sneak-peak.

A little mud, some grime, a few tears and plenty of laughter.

As the Gulmohar Tree blooms, I’m reminded of all this;

And what happened after.

We all grew up, some went away.

To ‘different coloured buildings’,

As we described it in those days.

Suddenly we were not children

We’d become boys and girls

Bees were not bees anymore,

And birds were no more birds.

Time turned its wheels, my home still there--we moved away.

As the Gulmohar Tree blooms, I feel the ache again

The slight feeling of the sky being a little blue, a little grey.

  

As I drank my tea on the terrace.

I thought to myself—“The new house is not so bad!”,

School got over, a few cried but I was mostly glad.

Make a life for yourself, said one and all,

Take a road that’s not been travelled.

We braced ourselves for a brand new phase,

A lot of stress, some luck, but mostly it all seemed like a haze.

It was a deep unrest I felt, as the time came to leave,

Left behind a lot of things, my comfort, my solace;

And the place I had begun to call home.

As the Gulmohar Tree blooms, I remember losing the familiar once again,

A new city this time—big, exhausting and rather alone.

Seeking newer waters.

I’m done with that battle now,

Felt the highs, the lows, and more importantly

--the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’.

Now I feel like someone who’s not written all of the above

An acquired taste, a new flavour,

A hand which doesn’t fit the earlier glove.

I’m at that crossroad in life,

Where I don’t know if I’ve seen enough or have a lot more to see;

As the Gulmohar Tree blooms, yet again I seek to leave,

This time though, not with pathos but a sense to set myself free.