Memory

The poem "A Plant" was composed in 1990, about eighteen years ago, when I was hardly twelve years old. It was one of my very first compositions of some note. It was the product of imagination of a boy who read books like "The Goldenrod" (Jim Slater) and "The Singing Stones" (Winifred Finlay), magazines like "Misha" (from erstwhile USSR) and "Maggi Fun Book", apart from the stories and poems of my school textbooks. It was first spotted in a rough copy by a trainee teacher and appreciated anonymously. In 1992, it was published in the school wall magazine. Here it is reproduced unedited, in all its juvenile diction and syntax.

A Plant

The thought came such
The plant thought much,
Living in a big city
Indeed a great opportunity,
Above the sky clear
And nothing to fear,
No one to chew its leaves
And no one to pile them in heaves,
And people so good
Providing with food,
With kindness in heart
Off they start,
And someone with pity
Would care for me in this city.

But the reality was such
And suffering was much,
For living in a big city
A very bad opportunity,
The sky above so cloudy
And everywhere so crowdy,
Smoke, smoke everywhere
Nothing quiet and fair,
And people so bad
That made the plant sad,
With mobile chimneys hushing
And the children crushing,
The plant so badly
That it waited for death sadly.

Story ID:	3516
Written by:	Amit Shankar Saha (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Poem
Location:	Kolkata West Bengal India
Year:	1990