By Pramod Rastogi
My Father’s Last Smile
The rain has returned to the city.
Puddles are forming on the road
And children are running in joy.
Kidding along, I play with them
Until I suffer from a coughing fit.
Unsteady, my heart starts flipping
As I sit there amid woeful eyes,
And in the blur could hear sounds afar
Of birds singing and me darting
With my father feigning to catch me.
I could see his blurred outlines
Coughing and sitting holding his heart.
I was laughing and he smiled at me.
He never talked about his failing health,
As more and more often he got nailed
To his bed, but his smile was intact.
The street was getting busy,
Yet, living with this everlasting memory,
I walked back to my home infused
With the last smile of my father’s love
Anchored to the silence of my heart.
Pramod Rastogi is an Emeritus Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is a Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is the 2014 recipient of the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award. He is currently a guest Professor at the IIT Gandhinagar, India.
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