Family

On one such rainy afternoon,
he walked gingerly down the steps
of his nursery school.
The other kids were done
with sailing their paper boats.
Their mothers came in
rolled up saris, irritation
writ large around their bindis;
and hauled their wards
off towards home:
towards the cheery fires,
of their nuclear families;
their units of primordial
social organization.
The corridors were long
and empty. The ayah gone,
the sweeper yet to come,
the durwan lost in oblivious siesta,
possibly dreaming of home too,
his humble home in the hinterland.
Ma was late, delayed by work,
detained by her evil boss,
who he imagined to be a cross
between the school principal, and
Amrish Puri, from the Hindi films.
It rained and rained,
he waited and waited,
the stains of the aloo subjee from his
friend's tiffin drying up on his sleeve.
Ma was late to pick him up,
and to this day, rainy afternoons,
remind him of family - our primordial
unit of social organization,
that once nurtured and schooled him,
but which to him have now
the meaning or purpose
of a castaway umbilical cord.
Only the atavistic longing for
a womb, to shelter from the rain.