My father travels on the late evening train <br />Standing among silent commuters in the yellow light <br />Suburbs slide past his unseeing eyes <br />His shirt and pants are soggy and his black raincoat <br />Stained with mud and his bag stuffed with books <br />Is falling apart. His eyes dimmed by age <br />fade homeward through the humid monsoon night. <br />Now I can see him getting off the train <br />Like a word dropped from a long sentence. <br />He hurries across the length of the grey platform, <br />Crosses the railway line, enters the lane, <br />His chappals are sticky with mud, but he hurries onward. <br />Home again, I see him drinking weak tea, <br />Eating a stale chapati, reading a book. <br />He goes into the toilet to contemplate <br />Man's estrangement from a man-made world. <br />Coming out he trembles at the sink, <br />The cold water running over his brown hands, <br />A few droplets cling to the greying hairs on his wrists. <br />His sullen children have often refused to share <br />Jokes and secrets with him. He will now go to sleep <br />Listening to the static on the radio, dreaming <br />Of his ancestors and grandchildren, thinking <br />Of nomads entering a subcontinent through a narrow pass.<br /><br />Dilip Chitre<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/father-returning-home/
