The House Boat

 

In a faded sepia photograph stored in an old album,

I discovered my father, sporting a beard and smoking a pipe.

He wore a khaki shirt and in one hand a fishing rod,

he looked directly at the camera concious of his bearing and demeanour.

In the background was the wooden structure of a House Boat,

sitting on a placid lake with mountains in the distant background.

The photo lacked some clarity but it was unmistakable in what was portrayed.

 

My father was in India before the outbreak of war,

in his leisure time he retreated to the Kashmir and the House Boat.

There he relaxed and spent his days fishing and walking,

He developed a great and abiding affection for India.

It was indeed the jewel in the Crown of the Empire.

For my father these were his halcyon days as a young man,

with the war on a distant horizon, waiting for the first shot to be fired.

 

Years later, when the war was over he was back in England,

home, married with children but the thoughts of India never left him.

His memories of the grim realities of conflict were forgotten,

but India remained, for him a place set apart.

Secretly he yearned to be back there, to roam its highways,

to be immersed in its sounds, smells and all that made up the India he loved.

His war was fought in the jungles of Burma,

A 78rpm record of the Road to Mandalay formed a part of his collection,

this he often sat and listened to.

Then in his eyes I could see the Kashmir, the House Boat ,

all reflected in his thoughts and memories.