On the sienna shelves,
On the ebony tables,
Even in the over-sized boxes
matching the manila envelopes
carrying students’ essays,
Covers of different colours, different dimensions
some rough, some plain, some glossy,
a few artistically illustrated,
all at first played peek- a – boo,
then rested their eyes upon me.
With my chubby dimpled cheeks,
plump and funny,
playing the game of shyness shifting to mischief
and vice-versa,
as a girl of six,
in your morning study-room,
I reached for your arms,
You smiled then lifted me .
Once in your comfy fatherly protectiveness,
I grabbed the red pen by your side,
underlined 3 lines on the piece of paper
in front of you where the words looked endless
to me.
“What is this ?” I asked.
“Put the pen down!” you ordered,
“This is a book” ,you went on saying ,
“ Don’t underline with red pens!”
I giggled, then blushed.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m reading .”You answered.
“Why do we read?” I asked.
“To keep in touch with languages,
To learn new words,
To know what others have to say,
To let our knowledge grow,
To understand things deeply,
At any time you can read,
A book is a friend too,
It can cheer you up, make you sad,
open doors to imagination,
or open your eyes to reality.
Oh , my little daughter, a book is everything!
There’s so much I want to explain to you
but right now you are only six,
All that you have to remember,
“Read! Read! Never give up!”
You smiled again and put a story book
in front of me.
“This is yours” You said.
“Yes it’s Bunny -Willie!” I exclaimed
outlining the big yellow rabbit’s ears
with my index finger;
“So now you can read too?” you asked.
“Yes” I replied enthusiastically
proud to feel like a grown-up, like you.
So I went on reading
about Mother Rabbit,
Father Rabbit,
and Willie Rabbit,
The happy and hardworking family that
saved all carrots of Terre Silencieuse
during a tropical cyclone hitting the island.
You went on with your History book
about Ancient Civilizations.
Father and Daughter,
shortly, we were both absorbed in our reading;
Oh Words! Words!
They looked wonderful to me!
Books were all around us,
Words everywhere!
I loved the feel of alphabets,
how alphabets bound to become words,
how words embraced each other and became sentences,
how those sentences grew into paragraphs, chapters and
finally birthed whole books!
Surely, my dear father,
on that day you taught me another lesson
both as dad and teacher,
another one that would last for a lifetime,
made me be who I am today.
I fell for the abundance of words
on that morning;
Today, in many ways I owe it to you ;
I’m a writer, a poet
Words surround me,
They are everywhere.
Vatsala Radhakeesoon
