We only had one room.

We were poor then.

We grew up sleeping to the snore of my father,

And the tinkle of my mother's bangles in our dreams.

My elder brother’s whooping cough,

Which made all of us wake up.

The sound of my brother coughing,

My mother shaking him up to ask

if everything was fine.

Then I became rich,

I shifted everyone to a new house.

Proud, with lots of rooms,

We had rooms for everyone and our children.

One fine morning, I discovered my mother dead,

on the floor of her bedroom.

With her eyes bulging out and

foam flowing from her mouth.

With her sheet pulled to one side,

A part still clenched in her fist.

She would have experienced pain.

She must have struggled.

Must have shouted for help

before breathing her last.  

We couldn’t hear her cries.

We thought we were building rooms,

but we were building distances.

We measured progress in square feet,

and forgot it is measured in how far a cry has to travel

to be heard.

In that one room, we had no space,

but we had each other.

In these many rooms, we have all the space,

and have lost each other.

We finally had enough rooms to live apart,

and not enough nearness to die together.

~

Jay Jagdev