Adil Jussawalla: A Poet Of Modern India Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

The missing man has been found again
And he is none but Adil Jussawalla
Resurfacing after a break of almost some thirty-five years
When he wrote his first collections,
A poet of the sixties,
Just beginning or trying to make a tryst
With his maiden venture
And thereafter the silence,
The lull in between after adding one more.

A hollow man, no man, Eliotesque,
A look stranger like that of Auden, Audenesque
He is a poet of Bombay as Ezekiel is,
An Oxford returned fellow,
A sojourner, a tourist and a traveller,
He is a poet of poetic chits and chats,
Tidbits and broken statements
Delving in the urban space mainly,
Following Auden’s style of The Unknown Citizen
Apart from his siding with Eklavya
As Daruwalla sides with Karna and Charvak.

The poet just like Nissim Ezekiel sees the growth of Bombay
Relating to in the form of a vilagerly island,
As Wordsworth sees in Upon The Westminster Bridge,
Auden in Look, Stranger
Alluding to the slash of the sea waters
And the moving away of ships,
Eliot in The Hollow Men
The hollow and stuffed men,
Headpiece filled with straw
Similarly Adil too sees the city of his birth
While landing from foreign
As Arnold sees the cliffs in Dover Beach.