Father and Son

NS Rajan

SON:

Twenty one am I, educated, but not rich

Am soon on my own, dear Father, teach and enrich

FATHER:

Most of life’s wisdom consists of being wise in time

Bestow your energy and youth earning a dime

If you don’t have any by the time you are forty

Life’s twists and turns will play with you very dirty

Earn it – if you don’t, you’d rarely get a wink

If you have it still you can neither sleep nor think

World bends to you, sonny, and makes it all very sunny

Do have more than a penny, spares you of poor’s agony

Money you will learn either serves or governs

Inflicts all races, sepoys, kings and concerns

Never know the worth of it till the well’s dry

Late by far, then, to rise from one’s misery

No honey for a bee that flies not to the flowers

Industrious be, enrich your hive; sumptuary delivers

Indigence, the way out rarely simple, as way in

Insolvency vexes spirit, despair’s quick sand akin

Sterlings can never pay off all your debts

Real wants are few, imagined vast , life begets

Farthing forever on scaffold, sovereign on throne

If you owe someone, debtor shall atone

Make money by all means, but only as means

Not just as end in itself lest it surely demeans

Single minded devotion to earn your sustenance

A focus let it be, one mission- a sure penance

Live a good life, toil, earn, share all you can, be

Protect you family, parents, wife and children to be

Moderation will stand by through joys and sorrows

Success shall bless, don’t give up hope for the morrow

SON:

Forty am I, today – confirmed not to your wisdom;

Living in penury, Father – poor till kingdom come?

(Luck_MET Museum: This photo was captured when I visited the MET Museum, a treasure trove of art in the heart of the city of New York. Even as you enter the museum, the courtyard had this pond in which I could see a number of coins beneath the water. Like most of us tend to drop a coin into water hoping luck would embrace us, visitors like me have tried their luck! At a particular angle, the shimmering water with the melding reflection of the blue skies overhead and a building nearby created moving works of art, in their own right. The picture is uniquely one of its own, perhaps, as water takes on a million forms.)