Dr. Meenakshi Mohan
What the World Needs
The happiest heart that ever beat was in some quiet breast ….
John Vance Cheney
A Little Visitor
She looked out her window.
The fluffy snowflakes were falling from far above like confetti.
The mounds of snow covered the yard and the roads.
And it coated the trees and bushes with white blankets.
Children down there made the best of their school day off,
laughing, jumping, and throwing snowballs at each other.
Their glee brought a smile to her face.
And a wisp of cloud lifted from her mind —
old memories became alive.
She remembered it wasn’t too long ago
when her little boy was there playing with her husband,
making a snowman with carrots for its nose and olives for its eyes.
Her husband put his tie on its neck — how happy her little boy was to see that.
His joyful laughter still echoed in her ears.
She thought the time had been like the sand
slipped grain by grain, year by year, leaving sweet footprints behind.
Now, in her silver years in her Cimmerian life,
she only had those memories to live with.
As she was sinking back into her lonely world,
she heard a knock on the door.
She had a surprise little visitor with a Mickey Mouse hat on his head —
a dimpled smile and a plate in his hand,
Mrs Johnson, Mom sent a carrot cake for you.
She was so touched and happy to welcome this little visitor
who turned out to be a chatter bug so full of funny stories.
Mrs. Johnson and the little visitor had a great time together.
She enjoyed telling him all about her childhood,
her growing-up years, and her son, who now lived abroad.
She read him a story from her son’s childhood book collection.
She let him play with his toys, cars, and trucks.
They had hot chocolate time together with carrot cake and cookies.
As he was leaving, he said,
Mrs. Johnson, I will come back again tomorrow after my school,
I had such a great time with you.
She smiled and tousled his hair.
And saw him running off to his house.
Her house was filled with the echo of his chit-chat and laughter.
She sang after a long time as she cleaned up the cups and plates.
She had a little friend now who came to fill the vacuum in her life —
a ray of sunshine to her dark alleys.
Ah! If only the world could have
more little visitors to fill the lonely lives of many!
If Only
How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time.
Morgan Freeman
My heart felt heavy with sadness,
when I saw half-naked, skinny children on the footpath,
next to their mother in her ragged sari and with a child in her lap.
Her aluminum begging bowl lay in front of her with barely a few coins,
not enough to carve the hunger of this impecunious family.
I cried most tearfully,
when I saw some rich stepped out of their fancy cars
in their expensive, designer outfits and passed by this destitute family
with a smirk on their faces and remarks,
This city is so littered with these urchins.
I thought aloud,
Where were poor people’s humble rights to live and survive?
Soon, an auto-rickshaw stopped near the footpath —
the rickshaw wala, in his humblest clothes, got down with blankets in his arms.
He wrapped the shivering children with warm blankets and handed one to their mother.
He bought some food for them from the street food vendors,
and stood there momentarily with a look of satisfaction on his face
as he saw them eating hungrily from the banana leaf.
Before he went, he left some money
from his day’s earnings in the beggar’s bowl.
.
The children and the mother looked gratefully at this kind-hearted person.
I reflected,
If we had more kindness and compassion in our hearts,
the world would be different.
If only we had more like auto-rickshaw wala.
If Only ….
Dr. Meenakshi Mohan is an academic, art critic, children’s writer, editor, painter, and poet. She has taught at universities in Chicago, Boston, and Towson, Maryland. Her book reviews, art critics, interviews, and poems regularly appear in different journals and anthologies, in addition to several books by her. She has been invited twice to solo exhibit her paintings in Potomac Library, Maryland. She is on the Editorial Team for Inquiry in Education, a peer-reviewed journal published by National Louis University, Chicago, Illinois. She is serving as an advisory editor for Confluence, UK. She is a recipient of The Panorama International Literature Festival Award, 2022 and the Setu Bilingual Journal Award for Excellence for her Writings and Art, 2022. In addition, she received The Literoma Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also been featured several times in the local journals in the Maryland area. http://www.meenakshimohan.com
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