{"id":14854,"date":"2018-07-09T09:41:15","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T05:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=14854"},"modified":"2018-07-09T09:41:15","modified_gmt":"2018-07-09T05:41:15","slug":"oh-happy-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/oh-happy-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, Happy Days!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">She was just sixteen\u2026 <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Ready for marriage, <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Her parents decided. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Oh, happy days!<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Ramdass was a true-blue Telgu lad; <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Tifrer sang at her wedding gamat; <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">All the village notables of Quartier Militaire <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Attended the wedding feast.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Oh, happy days! <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A year later, Dev was born; <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Then came Raj, followed by <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Nila, Swatee, Vimla, Devi, Santa <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">And a few years after her marriage <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Gouna died giving birth to her 8th child.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Oh, happy days? <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A beautiful life was wasted. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Mum Gouna, <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">In the mid 1930\u2019s <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">You passed the Primary School Certificate <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">With MERIT. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">You could have been <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">A school teacher, a nurse or a civil servant <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">BUT traditions decided otherwise. <\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Oh, happy days?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Dear Lord, we no more want Tragic Gounas. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Let us pray that today\u2019s <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Anushkas, Melanies and Nargises <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Will succeed in wiping off Gouna\u2019s tears.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Mum Gouna, Dev is now 76. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">He still misses you <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">As much as the little boy of ten <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Who followed your coffin to the graveyard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>29 June 2018<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She was just sixteen\u2026 Ready for marriage, Her parents decided. Oh, happy days! Ramdass was a true-blue Telgu lad; Tifrer sang at her wedding gamat; All the village notables of Quartier Militaire Attended the wedding feast. Oh, happy days! A year later, Dev was born; Then came Raj, followed by Nila, Swatee, Vimla, Devi, Santa [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":14855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7946],"tags":[582,11612,11601],"class_list":["post-14854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem","tag-dev-virahsawmy","tag-oh-happy-days","tag-poem"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Poem.jpg?fit=550%2C275&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-3RA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}