Feroza Jussawalla is professor of
English at the University of New Mexico in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. With a BA from
Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, and
an MA and PhD from the University of Utah,
she first taught for 20 years at the
University of Texas in El Paso. Over the
years she has found that Spanish, together
with her native Gujarati, Hindi, and
English, is a natural medium of creative
expression for her. Feroza Jussawalla is the
author of Family Quarrels: Towards a
Criticism of Indian Writing in English
and has also published Interviews with
Writers of the Postcolonial World and
Conversations. Her latest book is a
collection of poems, Chiffon Saris,
from which the poem on this page is
reproduced.
My mother
My mother came to take care of me while I
had cancer.
But all she did was rock back and forth
and hold her tummy bent over with nervous
exhaustion.
They say the worst thing for a parent
is to face the mortality of children.
Outside the surgeries she held her stomach
and rocked back and forth.
In the chemo room she rocked back and forth,
the knots in her belly almost fetus-like.
So knotted up was she that like a french
knot
she was unable to open up.
But somehow, she managed
to give birth again, to me.
"A new lease on life," she said.
She has said this since I was a teenager.
She has always managed, somehow,through
difficult times,
a son gone astray, a daughter spoiled,
"Bachaon nu sukh," children's happiness she
was never to see,
an astrologer, had said.
But older and wiser now I give myself and
her a new lease on life.
Forgiveness.
Abrar Ahmed was born in 1954. He did
his MBBS and specialized in ENT diseases and
occupational medicine. He lives and
practices in Lahore.
He started writing poetry around 1980 and
his first and only collection, Aakhri Din
se Pehle, was published in 1997. He also
writes essays and literary reviews and is
the recipient of the Husn-i-Qalam Adabi
Award for 2002. Two collections of his
poetry, one of ghazals and the other of
nazms, and a book of critical essays
entitled Taassuraat are his
forthcoming publications. He is also
translating selected Russian poetry into
Urdu.
Abrar Ahmed is popular among contemporary
modernists. His intellectual keenness is
compelling and interests the reader. He is
more convincing as a poet in his nazm, which
perpetually portrays the dilemma of the new
age, fraught with a sense of loss and
futility. His introspective poems are webbed
around his person and occasionally move into
outer spheres, only to be pulled back into
the pit of uncertainty and vagueness
characterizing the strife within the self.
Life is absurd, but worth living, he says.
During his advances towards life, he has
felt a persistently expanding shadow of
death within him. This conflict, he says,
inspires him the most.
The poem selected for translation is from
the collection, Aakhri Din se Pehle,
published by Gora Publishers, Lahore, in
1997.
If I were to...
If I were to dream,
I should have dreamt
of windows, opening
towards freedom and love
and of wide, spacious courtyards.
Why did I dream of bolted doors?
If I were to awaken,
I should have awakened
on a cool, cloudy morning,
holding your hand.
Why did I open my eyes
in this house, ridden
with grief and uncertainty?
If I were to disintegrate and scatter,
I should have scattered
on the vast sea-slate
or in your feet.
Why did I, on defenceless paths
debase myself?
If I were to wait,
I should have awaited the one,
who would explore new
paths to reach me.
Why did I, with my eyes alit,
wait on a deserted road?
If I were to run,
I should have run relentlessly
on some unknown, uneven course
with eyes shut.
Why did I flounder and stumble
on familiar paths?
If I were to discontinue and stop,
I should have stopped by a lakeside,
under alien skies.
Why did I crouch
on the doorstep
of dismal, dreary days?
If I were to sleep,
I should have slept somewhere here,
on this bed,
or in my suburban surroundings.
Why did I sleep
on a rock of agony and sleeplessness?
And If I were to do so much,
I should have joined the rest in this race,
or at least,
bashed myself against walls,
knocking them, pulling them down.
- Introduced, selected and translated by
Yasmeen Hameed
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