Lyrically Yours!

Thursday, February 04, 2010

The other day, my 8 year old son came home a wee bit more excited than usual. He had recited a poem at the school poetry contest. He said, “My recitation was followed by the loudest applause; my class-teacher’s face was bursting with laughter; my best friend clapped for me the longest and the loudest…” I asked him to recite it before me and he instantly took his position – body straightened, heels together and toes apart, hands folded in front of chest with the fingers of the two hands clasping each other like a hook. He started with a calm expression on his face – “Good Morning. My name is Dhruv Goel. I study in III-B. Today I’m going to recite a poem. The title of my poem is ‘Mother Doesn’t Want a Dog’ by Judith Viorst.

‘Mother doesn’t want a dog.
Mother says they smell,
And never sit when you say sit,
Or even when you yell…’

My hands clapped in delight as though charmed by the lyrical voice and flawless rendition of the boy. I gave him a tight hug and then asked him to wash and change.


I had heard him recite his school poems before. While walking together in the park, holding hands with him, I would often suggest him to recite a poem or to tell a made up story of his own. He always obliged graciously.


I too participated in my school’s poem recitation contest every year. I used to walk up to the dais, legs shaking, hands sweating, butterflies in stomach – a complete picture of nervousness, and then somehow introduce myself in an already faltering tongue. I could never recite beyond the first line of the poem. I never really understood the lyrical beauty of any poem, but all the same, every year stood at the dais in order to try remembering more than the first line of the poem.


Nature has its own ways of rewarding one’s perseverance, and mine got rewarded in the form of my son whose lyrical as well as literary abilities make my heart glow with warmth.