NOT MY SMILES ANY MORE

NOT MY SMILES...

The smiles that you see on my face is not mine,

for I have forgotten how to smile any more.

These are the smiles of the orphaned children,

who look at me with bewilderment

as if I am an alien, who has landed in their villages.

In amazement these children don’t even remember

how their fathers’ faces looked like once!!!

Now that it lie hanging atop walls in framed glasses,

with dried garlands hanging around the pictures

and a long streak of red tilak on their foreheads.

The smiles that you see on my face is not mine,

for I have forgotten what joy of life is all about!!!

These are the smiles of the widows,

who have lost their husbands to suicides

while listening to my broken Marathi to understand what I say to them.

Every single day they are fighting a war

to bring up their fatherless children with gusto.

Sometimes feeding them two meals-a-day

and at times just one to somehow survive,

to still thank the almighty for keeping them alive.

Johnny D

17^th October 2010