Zesty Poetry of Jitendra Vasava

Living and Dying in a Foreign Tongue

The language that was at home in the ear

and seeped into our blood

with the thread of grandma’s story

in the dark night.

Through forest-river-field, astride grandpa’s

shoulders, the language that entered within through

the eyes.

The language of the light of a morsel of food

chewed and fed by mother.

The living language of the family, neighbourhood, village

seen through my fingers entwined with my father’s

at festival time.

A language alive

in the family-courtyard-village.

Everyone lives as one.

Dances, sings, works as one.

The sorrow of one

is the sorrow of all.

Our language that takes us to

this higher path

could not even climb

the threshold of the schoolhouse.

I sat alone in school

while our tongue sat outside

whining, like a dog.

The master said: don’t speak in our language.

I was scared and could not ask:

Why can I not speak our tongue?

Who forced that foreign tongue into

our master’s mouth?

From 10 to 5 during the day

it sat on the iris.

Like the deep darkness of the darkest night,

as letters, it made its way into me through the eye.

At times, as if possessed,

it forces its way into my body through my fingers.

Forcing its way through the lashes

of the teacher’s green stick

that foreign tongue.

Proving us uncouth,

night and day

it tries to civilise us.

How to rule over each other?

Letting us live, it kills.

That language teaches

how teeming mid-bazaar

to snatch the fruit

of someone else’s labour.

It leaves us living dead

that foreign language. 

— Jitendra Vasava

Translated from Dehwali Bhili by Gopika Jadeja

Such a hard-hitting poem. The personification of language, its exclusion, comes across beautifully. I like the way he uses the senses so actively.

Based in Mahupada village in Gujarat's Narmada district, Jitendra is the founder and president of Adivasi Sahitya Academy and edits Lakhara, a poetry magazine dedicated to tribal voices.

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