Pen, Inkpot and I : Sahiya Akademi Award Acceptance Speech

At the age of flying kites in the sky, the lads of my community begin working on a tea shop or labor. I used to paint on the mud walls with coal; the coal that was also used for tooth powder. From a short distance the azaan rhythm from the mosque would dance in my veins. Off and on there were programs of Naat and quawwali in the street. The eid was celebrated with such mehfils whole night. Nasir from Jaipur would sing all night gazals after puffs of charas. The same rhythm was inscribed in my brain. I do not know what is behre ramal or behare rajaz . Every Thursday a faquir with the sound of chimta would pass singing ghazal of Mir,

‘Faqirana aaye , sadaa kar chale
Miyaan khush raho hum dua kar chale’

I had painting as a hobby from my childhood days. in Urdu titles on the movie screen and in the aayats inscribed on the mosque walls, I saw paintings. This is why after learning Urdu I am fond of calligraphy. I love black color that is like truth of the darkness.

Only the darkness is close to us,
closer to us.
even if you see with closed eyes,
one can see clearly. The darkness is closer

The hobby of canvas too, was expensive. I could get poems from junk shops. I got ‘Urdu script teacher’ from one such shop. I learnt Urdu on my own. I continue to learn Urdu even today. I began writing verse. But whether I wrote correct in Urdu script, I would know only after I got them published.
The diction of my poetry was absurd somewhere, surreal somewhere or sometimes of a language of a common man or sometimes that of abuses. This is the reason why my dalit poetry was thrown out in the editor’s waste paper basket. Though that is what I had inherited as the style of language from my surroundings.

When a sensitive human being becomes simple, a common man, poetry is born within him. Pash and Cherabanda Raju, Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou  are the ones who stepped on sharp swords. Stalin is buried within the pages of history but the locale of Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem is still alive with me. The documents that tell the world of the horrors of Nazi concentration camps are rotting in the record rooms. But Miklosh Rodniti and Dan Pagis still scream within my blood. The poetry of Namdeo Dhasal and Yashwant Manohar  fill my eyes with embers. Reading them in solitude, I keenly feel intense pain, helplessness and longing for life.

I have suffered the acid life of caste system thousands of years old. The pain of anti-reservation movement has accumulated within me and when they revealed themselves as poetry, they are not mere descriptions of events or analysis or just passing through things. They were the search for their roots, too. These memories frozen in the rib cage wanted to closely examine them, wanted to transform them.

The language is a mystique and the words are the social heritage. The words are rooted in our dreams and memories. In a poem every word speaks. Every word is a isme aazam, a Mahaamantra. The poet has the same love and bond with words that a potter has for the clay. The word that is created lives forever and becomes universe itself. The intensity is the prerequisite of poetry.  For me poetry, more than an art is the longing for life. It is a brush of life that expresses our joys and sorrows; we can see the shadow of present so intensely.

I have felt that all the similes and symbols are born from the experiences of life. I consider them part of realism only. I see, hear and feel warmth of the word; I am bored with stereotyped style of thinking and writing. In the creative moments I hear the soft sounds and growls that come in and go out, come in and go out and select them. I cannot write anything that has emerged only from the world of dreams and is far off from the truth of life. All the epics that deny existence of human beings should be thrown away in ocean. The true poetry is that which inspires and heartens human being in their struggle of life.

When I take pen
In my hand
There emerge
Black screams …
In the black ink
Perhaps
Live
Souls of black people!

Jayant Parmar

(Translated by Dr.G.K.Vankar)