by Krishna Kumar
I hadn’t heard my mother’s voice in a long time.
The hostel didn’t have phoning facility
Nor did the warden allow us to go out to make phone-calls.
I longed for my parents’ warm presence
I had lots to ask, about grandpa and grandma,
Younger brother, uncles and aunts, cousins, father’s work,
Maternal uncle’s supposed trip to Tirupati
And what not! But what could I do?
My home address was one of the things I most remembered those days.
I took an A4 sheet and a blue sketch-pen
And with the little eyesight I had, strained my eyes
And shaped Tamil letters in ugly zigzagged chunks.
I tore a Braille sheet from my English book
And wrapped the letter inside.
Stapling it secure, I wrote the address and “Free for the Blind” atop the flecked card,
And disposed it at the post-box kept at our school gate.
Nobody at my school knew of my hand-written letter.
I waited, and the reply came when my father came to visit me.
He told me my letter reached home.
Thank god they didn’t send their reply by a letter!
Otherwise I should’ve asked somebody to read it out for me.
I could see what I wrote, but not what others wrote to me
Because my parents wouldn’t have written in ugly chunks.
