School Days//
It's a story not too familiar,
That I heard from my great grandmother,
About the town she grew up.
And so she said from here on-
"In the days gone by,
Our house was in the outskirts of the old town,
A town that was haunted by oblivion.
Most of the grown up men were fighting in the western front,
Men compelled to fight despite nothing at stake.
The wives spent most of their time fearing a gleam future.
The children ran around the ghost town, totally clueless.
But the town had many plantations around,
Tea gardens as fondly called.
There were few tea factories to process the tender tea leaves too,
To soothe the senses of the elites across the world.
But the war ensured,
There were shortage of hands at the factories and plantations alike,
Forcing higher ups to take drastic measures.
The council of the higher ups unanimously proclaimed that despite the war,
the tea factories must operate nonstop,
As Europe must never run out of tea cups.
Take the children out of school,
Came the diktat.
The girls must pluck leaves from the tea gardens.
While the boys above eight must be inside the factory gate.
Then I was not even a teenager,
But I was a good student
Studying in the primary grades.
But I never went to the school again,
As I mended the tea plants for the next six years,
Morning to dusk.
Then came the famine.
Though there was no scarcity of food grains,
But artificially induced by the higher ups.
Letting the natives die in millions,
Just for their sadistic delight.
Finally peace did prevail.
But for six whole years the school stayed closed.
Half of the men who went to the war never came back.
And those who did had atleast one limb short.
Boys as young as fifteen were forcefully conscripted,
Widows had lost their young sons too,
Fighting a war that had no meaning to them.
I too cried over the news of the death of my father and two brothers,
All died fighting a war that we should not have even bothered.
But it changed our life forever,
My mother and my two younger sisters.
Soon I was married to a man,
Who had returned from the battlefield, Having lost one eye.
I was lucky,
As he was appointed as a foreman,
In one of the tea gardens.
Soon the school reopened,
As we had achieved independence.
Eventually all my four children did study there,
All clearing their matriculation, Fulfilling my dream in the end.
So if you are writing a poem on school days,
Tell them our generation's story.
A story of a small town,
Surrounded by green hills of tea all around,
A town in the heart of the eastern sun".
And so concluded my great grandmother with tears in her eyes.
(c) Anurag Talukdar
