Mapping Memories
Juveria Tabassum
Bear with me, my
friend
I’ll tell you where
I’ve been.
No hills, no seas, no
rivers
No lakes, no lofty
mountains.
No tickets or
passports,
What’s a visa, why
the currency?
I’ve travelled through
time,
I have hiked through the ages,
The pages, my plane
The music, my ship
Words, my only fuel;
Charged up with Their
Imagination.
I’ve been across the Seven
Seas,
Climbed mountains
The Chomolungma too, in
Paths of Glory.
Been all over Europe,
to England,
Where I heard the
Solitary Reaper croon
My steely wanderlust
that bore me there,
Took me also, across
the Atlantic, into the States,
Where through
revolutions, I found,
Roots of people, not
just trees.
Buried deep; spread
far, far and wide.
Wide enough, to slip
into Africa,
Slide under the Nile
And sway into the
Sahara.
The burning heat, the
pouring sweat,
Oh look! Camels and
an oasis!
These are not
mirages, just memories,
Conjured up from the
books that I’ve read.
From between the
stumps of the 22 yards,
Durban and Jo’burg,
Cape of Good Hope.
The Gentleman’s Game
it was, too,
That drove me Down
Under
To the land of the
koalas,
Bordered by the
boisterous buzz of Sydney.
Then flew,
trans-Tasman
Into sheep and
natural geysers,
The Haka- ‘bout
which, I’m none the wiser.
Soon calls the East,
The smell of the
spicy Orient.
A land too diverse,
to be
Encased in my
imagination-
My own Homeland,
Now so new and grown,
Yet still retains the
splendour
That Tagore did write
about.
I’ve been through
time, I tell you
Been to places I
couldn’t forget.
Met people I don’t
remember
Done things too many
to recollect
I have no proof, no
pictures,
No painted portraits;
No slick selfies.
Memories are all I
have.
Sad, happy, scary,
Wild, wild, wild
memories.
-j.t.
-j.t.
