Ma: The Passing on of Bimal Roy's Widow at 82

Ma    Maa is gone
I can hear the boy Joy say
I can hear his sobs
Joy who like me did not marry
Who like me loved only mother

I was watching Madhumati on TV
When the news came
She died on Ganesh Immersion Day
A good day to go on I'd say

Her one eye had gone long ago
And then her legs gave way
And various other limbs
Her children stayed around her

She took all her decisions worldly
from a spiritual guru
Whether to sell out to Bombay's builders
Whether to buy out a fractious daughter

And of course they were other-worldly
those decisions!
She sat among her photographs
of her famous husband, his films

She photographed him as well
as he filmed women
The Eternal Feminine
From Çetal Hüyük

I bought back an effigy
of the Great Mother
Really a maw
Recovered from under the earth

7000 years old
It was found in a flourbin
from the underground neolithic dwelling
One of a kind

They put her back into the earth.


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