Deep White Pearls – Amrita Valan

By Raja's Insight on October 2, 2016 • ( 0 )

Photo Credit: Pixabay.com

Pearls and I will always be friends

I wore them like little flowers clusters in my ears

Daddy’s sweet little girl at thirteen

Pearls adorned my neck much later

The single string clasped on the side at college

Three careless strings around my throat

The days I wanted to look casually elegant

Eloquent in my newfound adulthood as wife

Simpering paragon of femininity

A new bride.

These days I’ll settle for

Cheap cut glass rosary beads

With mother of pearl broach pinching me

Into propriety.

I have learnt since then

To value not their showcase innocence

But the dignity of simple resilience.

A pearl

Is birthed

In agony

an accumulation of a thousand

Tears

Forever compressed.

About the Author

I was born and raised in Calcutta, India and am residing at present in Bangalore. I have a degree in English Literature from Loreto college and a post graduate degree from Jadavpur University.

I have been through a spectrum of jobs in diverse fields before settling down and starting my family. One of my jobs was in the BPO sector, handling claims for motor insurance, and health insurance for UK and US processes respectively. Another was creating simulation papers for training management entrance examinees in deductive logic. All through which I scribbled poetry in the odd breaks in between.

Motherhood and my two boys have been a defining influence in my literary life. Though this book has few of them, I have started writing for children, after their birth.

Thus my self I introduce: I am here today Only as Akshara:The written word.

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