AS IF ENTERING THE WOMB
Written by Piyush Thakkar
Translated from the Gujarati by Dileep Jhaveri
Narrated by Bill Wolak
India
When he woke up
The sleep had slowly departed
Like a receding tide in the sea
And yet a little dampness was smeared in his eyes
The legs were not aching
The head was not leaden
There was no sentiment of chagrin
The mind was not engaged in any manipulation anyhow
Time was swathed out
Like feebly flowing waves
Of the ebbing sea
Or
He was stretched out
As if
All the accounts with Time were settled!
As if
An afterglow was laid
Like neither darkness nor light
Leaning on indolently drifting wind
He sat up
While rising to his feet
Today the legs felt no burden of the body
As if the ground itself was elevated in midair
He took a few steps
There was no rush to reach anywhere
Nor any restiveness
Like a breeze entering a tree
He entered through the door
How can one say that all was in order
Of course, he knew that
Something different was going on within him
In the end
Earth had entered within him through sleep
And made him her own
As if he had
Re-entered the womb.
Born in 1979 in rural Gujarat, Piyush Thakkar has earned a Master in Fine Arts and has earned several awards. His research on the painters Vasudaev Gaitonde and Gulam Mohammed Sheikh is highly praised. He has been honored by the Sahitya Akademi Delhi that has published his poetry collection. Besides being a poet and painter, he also is a publisher of several books of poetry and criticism by leading writers.
Dileep Jhaveri is a practicing general physician based in Mumbai and a well-known Gujarati poet and playwright. He has published several collections of poetry in Gujarati. Recently, he has published three books of poetry in the United States, Once This Mist Clears (2014), Fire Writes in Several Scripts (2015), Magic and Miracles (2017), as well as a group of non-fiction essays entitled The House of Three Widows all done by The New Feral Press. His latest translation is titled Breath Becoming a Word: Contemporary Gujarati Poetry in English Translation published by Sahitya Akademi Ahmedabad.