Jayant Parmar

I am a man like you

With the boulder at the day

Laden on my back

I, a lonely man,

Roam these alleys with filth and waste.

While walking the dusk descends on me .

The night feels terrible

This kuldi is my other face

And this broom, my third leg.

A man of my kind with two faces and three legs

Can’t really be called a man.

Yet I am a man just like you.

You have sheltered me in this hut

Made of rags and bamboo walls

Decorated with hunger, poverty, illness,

Made holes for insects and worms.

Who enters this hut except me?

When the dusk descends

I collapse into my broken cot

All night I fondle my groaning shadow.

Certainly someone will come one day

Tearing this darkness

And light the lamp lying on that table.

Kuldi is a kind of mud pot which was carried by Sudras hung on neck, they were forbidden to spit anywhere except in the kuldi.

 (Translated by Dr.E.V.Ramakrishnan)

Jayant Parmar

Jayant Parmar, born in 1954, works in a Bank in Ahmedabad. A bilingual poet, he writes in Gujarati and Urdu. He is a painter too.

He has published Aur, a collection of Urdu poems (1999). Another collection of Urdu poems, Pencil Aur Doosri Nazmein, is his forthcoming book.
He is recipient of Gujarat Urdu Sahitya Akademi Award, 2001, and Kumar Pashi Award, 2001, Bhasha Bharti Samman 2007 and Sahitya Akademi Award 2009.
His address: 12, Shantiniketan Society, Radha Swami Road, Ranip, Ahmedabad 382480. Tel: 079-27524234 (Res.), 079-27522781 (Office).