Nostalgia Painting

She has gone to India only once,

and that too was for my father’s funeral.

She didn't see me, climbing guava trees,

but she has heard a lot, nostalgia driven that I am,

I often tell her, how I climbed the trees like a monkey,

ate on the branches, and dropped guavas

which my mother gathered in a bag

for the family, and for the guests,

as calves and chickens roamed around.

It didn’t take long, for the imaginative child

to paint me as a kid, on a guava tree branch,

eating and picking the fruits,

with a grandma standing under it,

reminding me to be careful.

Such joy, for me and my old mother,

to be depicted, by an innocent child.

We are glad we have a guava tree now

in our California backyard,

and daughter gets to pick,

just like I did in my rural India backyard.

Nostalgia found a way, to be quenched.

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