I liked it in my grandmother’s days

When MIL (mother in law) and DIL (daughter in law)

Played rummy together

Adding two sisters in law on either side

They would partner for twenty eight

How then MIL and DIL

Cooked together in the kitchen

While working sisters

With brother in tow

Would go for evening movies

How in gardens they did sow

All together watched saplings grow

Listening to the other’s point

Was always so right it felt

Now it is other way round

With   MILs ready to love

 DILs are the ones to vouch for freedom

It is the thing they value most

And would have it at any cost

Now the days are longer

 With families smaller

The television took over

For others it is the mobile

 Wall between each member

Is the laptop and its tap

Face book and what’s up

 All the more they catch up

With ACs we need the door closed

So no way we can talk

Friends in families are now global

Share everything in heart in twitter

Need not be together

 Nor belong to each other

I loved it when mothers

Took kids to neighbors’ homes

 Talked and chatted long enough

One top of the other the women voiced

Face to face in summer,  over cookies and cool drinks

Children were outside playing

 Often mothers forgot to see

What kids were up to there

 I liked it when  kids  filled ink

Through plastic dippers

 Pressed  into the pens

And have the mess spilled out

On  thumbs and dresses

 On white thighs stained blue or black

And be excused for the clean up

Now for children it is like jail

 Constantly in the radar

While mama’s phones

Is glued to her ear

Her eyes are on the kid

This way they have  it all

The freedom to talk to whom ever

While kids are caught up tight

Without enough playtime

In routine,  only school time work

I liked it then when children played

All the time when they were not in class

Reading story books under mango trees

Far from mother’s prying eyes

For she had more to worry

Of the younger and more younger kids

She was busy with those more

Not like now, eat the head

Of a single child

 At the most only two

More she just can’t handle

I remember especially

The extended family

The cousins five and their parents

The hot water was always

Getting readied for all purpose

The wood chopped with axe,

Fed into the fire lit in backyard

And everyone bathed one after the other

There was place and time for animals

Danny the Dachshund dog snapped at sparrows all

 Malta the large udder goat

From Rajasthan, which only sister could milk

And how in rains,  goat kids were washed away

When stream overflowed, near by got flooded

The cows and calves came one after the other

The lovebirds lay eggs in nest in the courtyard

 How a yellow bird with a green love bird

Together have a sky blue offspring

Little kids watched and wondered long without any answer

When hens and ducks were found in every homes for eggs

 How they returned from fields every day at a time in flocks

Now see only in cold stores,

 Stripped off feathers nicely laid in a row

Sometimes with skin or without

And it is not violation.

 But when a poisonous snake is killed in a city

It is a crime so big

The snakes live in their natural habitat.

We humans are intruding them.

 Yes we know that we are greater in number

Where have we to go for our livelihood

We are working towards dwindling our lot however

Through many many ways

A hundred years from now

I wonder what all is left

 How it would be felt

It is not in me to tell