I Look Back and Look Forward

by Prof. Dr. Anil K. Prasad

I walk in the streets
of a foreign land
I have been walking for years
first I was alone then
I walked with my other half and
now I walk with my issue and the other half
with a sense of fullness
I move and marvel and move ahead
thinking of going home and move along
in the street towards the market
thinking I must be going home
for my child for it is the issue
of her education that makes me think so
I am the part of a diaspora
that move for work and for fortune
coming to terms with cultural
differences adjusting but never with
the feeling of quite at home
missing the flavors of home
which I try to find in the TV serials,
radio broadcasts in my language
when crossing borders, flying high
the airhostess smiled for a newspaper
and I immediately catch one from my country
and keep to read it and reread it
and preserve it for the time when the
feeling of loneliness pats at my back
encouraged, immediately I immerse myself
in the fluidity of the news and views which
take me for a swim in the native shore
where sea gulls wait for breaking news
of a place where I fail to reach
during my annual visits

I swim in the Red Sea
and think of Ganga
I am a double soul
with a double common sense
j'adoube in a play of chess
after crossing the borders
I am one but not one
I am a fractured plain
I am a river split
I am a buffer zone,
a superintendent of my psyche,
a self-counseling psychiatrist,
a consoling conscience -
I am a seeker
of openings and doors -
the traveling god of diaspora
I look back and look forward.

14-May-2006

More By : Prof. Dr. Anil K. Prasad

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Comments on this Poem

Excellent poem
Good Differentiation of foreign land and mother land

Aruneshwer
12-Apr-2025 21:00 PM

Very attaching ! Our Professor

Hamdi Al-Najjar
19-Jan-2011 10:49 AM