Illustration by Paperlily Studio
Wild Duck in the Sea
Ashwani Kumar
Before the sun has risen
A wild duck goes from the beach to beach
In his frail and light boat.
He sails past all the gloom and grief
Meets anonymous sailors wearing ill-fitted sonnets.
They exchange dried stems of turmeric
Pray in the hypnotic roars of warm-blooded dolphins.
For many, many days
He fishes in the salt and sweet waters
Chirping with the sound of sea-birds.
He has been a fisherman all his life
Searching for marine life inside the rubbish of the city.
Before the new day is born
He comes back to his village on the shore.
Waving goodbye to waiting fish-sellers
He gingerly walks to his palm-thatched attic of fantasies.
All of a sudden
There is so much rain at his window
But he prefers to keep sleeping like a golden egg of silence.
— —
*Turmeric is the favourite of the god Khandoba, the main deity of Koli fishermen in Mumbai.
Ashwani Kumar is a Mumbai-based Indian English poet, writer, and professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences. His anthologies, My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter and Banaras and the Other are noted for their subversive ‘whimsy’ quality by critics. His Banaras and the Other, first of a trilogy, was long listed for Jayadev National Poetry Award 2017. Recently, Hungarian poet Gabor Lanczkor has translated his new poems for a special volume: Architecture of Alphabets. He is currently working on Ayodhya, the second of the Banaras trilogy and his non-fiction book, Biharis (Aleph Books). He is also co-founder of Indian Novels Collective to bring classic novels of Indian Literature to English readers. His other major scholarly contributions include Community Warriors (Anthem Press), Power Shifts and Global Governance (Anthem Press), Global Civil Society: Poverty and Activism (Sage International).