Mom, where are you? writes V P Singh

‘‘One morning I woke up very early, and looked out of the window,’’ the former Prime Minister recalls the moment ‘lantern-lit boats’ sailed to him. He was staying at the Raj Bhavan in Mumbai.

‘‘There were small boats out at the sea with lights on them and these words came through my mind. When you pass away from the world, in our religion and mythology, they say you undertake your last journey by boat,’’ he says.

It is the visual which sparks off the poem, says Singh, whose poetry is inhabited by images of the journey and its end.

Suddenly I found afloat
My childhood paper boat
It signalled
‘Come it’s time to go.’

‘‘I used to play with paperboats in my childhood. As I grew up, I forgot about them. When you are finishing your journey, you are reminded of your childhood—and your paperboats,’’ he says.

Then, there is the striking two-liner about the Mother. ‘‘Mom,
Where are you?’’

‘‘I was thinking of my mother and wondering where she is. I had this sudden feeling, and it was very simple, just that she was,’’ he says.

Singh get philosophical about his lines, All my life I scribbled, Now I need an eraser: ‘‘One is doing and doing things. Then you come to a stage when you ask what is the meaning of all this?’’

His illness — Myloma — has deteriorated and 50 per cent of his bone marrow has got damaged. The doctors have advised him to undergo chemotherapy — something he has managed to avoid for the last 9 years since the disease hit him.

But he is fighting it and for the moment, the doctors are giving him injections to bring up his haemoglobin levels to see if he can manage for a few more months without chemotherapy.

Singh says most of his poems are written when he is in a ‘detached’ and ‘calm’ frame of mind. Most have been written outside Delhi. ‘‘Here events nibble away at creativity,’’ he says.

A typical day in the life of V P Singh begins with yoga in the morning and swimming for 45 minutes. This is followed by tea, ‘‘but I take three-to-four sips and my wife calls it a ‘peg of tea.’’’ He attends to his correspondence, paints for a while and after an afternoon rest, he meets people.

This is what a non-dialysis day is like. Every alternate day means dialysis at Apollo Hospital, strapped to a machine, after which he is too tired to do anything else.

For nine years now, Singh has fought his illness. He says: ‘‘Even if I have to undergo chemotherapy, maybe I will come back with a more active life.’’ But that does not mean politics. His immediate plans? ‘‘To get my English poems published.’’