Evaluation of Adil Jussawala from Social, Political and Historical

point of view and Realism

With special reference to

Sea Breeze Bombay & War a fragment of the Mahabharata

National Seminar on Indian Writing in English & in English Translation,

Department of English, University of Pune

25 - 27 of Feb, 2009 

Presented by

Mohammad Baset Dorrazehi

Student of M.A English, Pune College, University of Pune

To evaluate Adil Jussawala one must understand the complexities of his origin. He was a Parsi, born in Mumbai carrying an Indian Passport, as alienated from the authentic Indian Culture as a Britisher would be.

However, the country of his birth preys upon him to consciousness and calls upon him to question his urban disgust for rural India wallowing antiquated customs and rituals and hared bound faith in Karma and Dharma.

The complexities in the personality of Jussawala are the complexities that face the media adoring youth of today victims of a media created sub culture. That is retrograde and devoid of substance.

Jussawala was born in Mumbai. He spent many years in England. He studied to be an architect of worlds. He deftly created complex poetry which seems beyond comprehension. The tone is ironic, fragmented and non-linear. It evokes and indicts the human landscape of the mind. A landscape that is sterile, lacking in spirituality and in a perpetual state of catastrophe, totally ravaged by contradictions which can not be reconciled. We see here a man disturbed by the fact that idealism fostered by the British education in an earlier generation of all leaders, is not evident in his. The state of affairs post independence is far worse than that it was before.

Through non-linear staccato lines he shows how wantonly he feels exiled in his need to improve a country so hell bent on self destruction through its copious vanities and convoluted politics.

His incapacity to come to terms with his times, with its anomalies really distresses    the poet. He desires to cast aside the deep rooted past to face the amalgam present. Yet his consciousness is unable to grapple with the present that is all at once fascinating yet scary. We see a poet who wishes through his poetry to awaken his people toward loftier values and thought. The complex construction and part of the incomprehension is the result of this confusion and chaos in the mind.

To the lay reader he can be introduced as a teacher of language. He did a stint at Oxford, and at the elite St Xavier’s at Bombay and then did honorary fellowship at the International Writing Program in several countries. He is a highly respected presence at festivals.

We see a poet not moored in any ethos trying to surmount the tragedy of having to think and believe in language which is not his mother tongue.

The Sea Breeze is a typical Jussawala poem.

War - a fragment of Mahabharata is an attempt to use the loftiness of blank verse to convey modern day perspectives and the poets’ toil to uncover layers in the complex ancient text.  

My presentation will be divided into three parts: social, political, and historical. I’ll trace commentary through these lines without reference to critical writing on Jussawala.  

The Social Comment: The title Sea Breeze itself comments upon a society influenced by way farers who landed upon its coast and cast their influence on it.      

The Breeze brings in the cool evening alliances so essential to soften the humid Mumbai. In the name itself one can sense a love –hate relationship of the poet with the city of his birth. The city has an ethos not found anywhere else in the world. Its paradoxes and paradigms are always shifting. It is non fudge mental and offers a heaven to whoever walks in there. It provides all uprooted people an identity and a home.

“Surrogate city of brokering and buy”

With alliterative ease the poet profiles the city with an economy of worlds.

These lines continue as:

“Refugee’s harbors and port, Gatherers of ends whose brick, beginning work. Loose like a skin spotting the cost”

Truly, these lines are prophetic for Mumbai has provided a haven for refugees.                

Harbour has an intended pun. The harbor to keep safe Gatherer of ends “shows a strange twist of language implying the need make to ends meet starting brick by brick having sought asylum here. The open arm attitudes of a city, which welcomes even wool merchants from Tibet, though the city never sees a winter.

The social comment of Mumbai as one of those cities that let people thrives despite their diversity. A far cry from the unguarded coast that let terror strike a few months ago.

The social comment in War a fragment of Mahabharat is more implied.

Mahabharata has always represented an allegory for an individual fight against bad and evil.

The most telling comment is in the words.

“Earths a house divided against itself, storms open and slams it door”-

An extended metaphor to explain dualities of nature and life.

The ancient Indian concept of infinity or shunya is explained in the words.

“The only original is “O” the circle zero and then the moral is more profound in which is the mark he will get for acting smart”.  

Was it prophetic this word to describe a component of a society? Perhaps we can use these words for that director of the misnomer of a company called “Satyam”.

This is the world of lies deceit and spite.

“What else can condemn a society more than that its gurus also promise and do not deliver”.

The true explanation of the principles of Hindus concepts of Dharma is found in the lines “the smoke discolors Truth get in to everything we do”

What more indictment does one need than

“What passing bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of guns. Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle. Can palter out their hasty orisons.

“No mockeries for them”.

Perhaps we also a comment on holy wars or Jihad in these lines.

“Drop dead in the Great War. They said when I enlisted,” and the soul flies straight to God.”

In most definitive commentary for positive social action are the last lines. That read thus “give of yourself as much as you can for earth, palm the mother who cares for us all. Give that that this be paradise where we once and only live”.

The angst of every true poet is that he is aware that his social milieu has the capacity to rise and be a paradise if only all would give more easily and earnestly and take more subtly with reserve. 

The poet would love to play agent provocateur who can transform but his society is stone deaf adding to the angst is impotent rage.  The insurmountable anger that churns and stills in the embers of the mindscapes.

 Political comment:  So, we move from the social to the political. It is evident that politics is loathsome to the sensitive soul of the refined poet. For the politics is the art of strange bedfellows. “Gentlemen scissor Sind”.

For despite the claim to genteel airs, they did not think twice before scissoring Sind from its main land India. The human carnage the inhuman partition, nothing meant much or held value except that their writ should run. What matter if a land be dislodged and its people scattered. The political vendetta is well brought with the use of spars words.

The Tibetan movement in search of asylum and their arrival in Mumbai are captured in these lines

“Come from Tibet”

Scanning for the sea from the north, dazed in hole in their cracked feet“The politics of hate that renders a people homeless and compels them to leave the homes of their owns dazed by hope. They arrive with cracked feet tired and weary. The sea is their hope, their successor. The sea breeze soothes their frayed nerves. The Arabian Sea that lolls along the coastline of Mumbai cooling its frayed edges. The soft tender sea breeze.            

Mahabharata is one of the most ancient records of war from the view point of Sanjaya, who given an ad verbatim record of the events at Kurukshetra to the blind Sind. He is akin to breaking of news of  live of today. He has it in verse with profound aside too.

“We whistle like tops to the beat of war music”.

Politician love war and we love our politicians and egg them to war. The plight of the soldier is well brought out in

“Actors on a battlefield spinning like tops in excitement”.

That politics of war is mindless, is clear to the poet. He use simile to convey it to his readers. The spinning to poet has no aim but evokes excitement as in a child does war in the cold hearted and stony politicians.

If ever words were needed to describe politician and his art we just have to read these words. 

“Watch this scene setter and his pupils, they are not getting anywhere, they are strictly theatre, make up, gestures, you know that camp.”

The senility and haplessness of war and politics are yet again vividly protested in

“Eat the small ones and break the tall ones”

This is the war of flags. Power grabber flags our war off. The whole earth is up for grabs. When and were else will we see a clearer picture of the politician and histories?

“The marshal court marshaled him, he new he had sinned. Once a small rose tree scented with wisdom. Now a petrified forest”.

We see grand masters lose their sting in the art of politics.

“Drona agrees its all politics; the name of their game is politics, breaking his spirit on their wheel of doubt.”

War a fragment is filled with pearls of wisdom each decrying politics and the politician. The poet has to have an avid interest in the life round him. With much training, the social, political and historical nuances of a situation reveal themselves to the poet. He feels the dying urge to unravel these treasures to lay persons, who are not well attuned. The poet works with the noblest of intention but more often than no he is misunderstood by those to whom he voices his opinion. So he couches his ideas in comments spoken in voices of other taller men who walked the lonely path before him. Yet again the historical leitmotif is brought out in the words.

“Partitions people stitched shrouds from a flag.”

The reference to the bloodless comp of 1947which led to Pakistan being formed. The partition had a part being dismembered and the housing of a new flag at the cost of much inhuman tragedy.                          

The historical comment: The historical theme continuous in this line:

“Communities tear and form”

And the “Sea Breeze, Bombay” asks or investigate anything .Perhaps we see the prophecy here, for our lack of suspicion of the “Sea Breeze, Bombay” led to the unholy attack on the Tay and its aftermath.

War- a fragment of the Mahabharata draws upon the ancient epic to tell the tale of deceit betrayal abandonment and the death. The padavas are the goods one and kauravas are the evil. Abhianyn the son of Arjun learned in his mother’s womb about the penetration in to chakraveyah. With idealism and enthusiasm of the youth, he sets out with confidence in to the cosmic chakraveyah of war. He was promised that help that he could rely on. However all promises prove false and he falls a prey to war. Since time immemorial the war has been a game of deceit. It has no winners. It only heaps degradation on man. The weapons of warfare have greatly improved. Today chakraveyah can be penetrated only by nuclear missiles. But the base aim of all wars is anti-dharma abandonment and death.  

My choice of the two poems reveals Adil Jussawalla as a poet who captures the paradoxes of his times. The artificiality and vulgarity are clay with which he pots his poetry. His political consciousness is at once humane and urbane. His poems carry a unique aura about them, the aura of Dharma and truth. Adil Jussawalla has himself admitted that for the Indians crisis is perpetual. In the perpetual crisis the poet thrives sowing his seeds to weed out the reeds.

“Sea Breeze, Bombay” is a noteworthy for the concrete images of special reality. These images enable the poet to communicate an impersonal theme of the poet. Hence the poem is one of the finest city poems; we have in Indian English poetry.

The poet views Mumbai as a city that accepts and accommodates people having different backgrounds.

Bombay is a sanctuary for the refugees torn away from their native places. It provides opportunities for uprooted people to rebuild their lives. By doing so it plays the role of a surrogate city. It reforms the torn communities, like a breeze that soothes a tired body, the surrogate city heals the wounds of the refuges. It enables the to begin life afresh by finding new ways and routes. Thus it is nothing but all fineness itself, the image o the sea breeze symbol the kindness of the city hence the title is apt and significant.

The poem abounds in allusion and images. It alludes to the partition of India in 1947in to India and Pakistan. It alludes to the refugees flooding to Bombay from Sind (a part of undivided India before 1947). The image stitched shrouds from a flag brings bitterly and ironically enough the horrors that followed the partition. During the partition India witnessed the bloody riot. Thousands of people were killed in the riot. In all bitter ironies, the poet describes the as using the contrasts flags as shrouds to cover corpses. The country was out and people became defenseless and homeless.

The poet use tailoring images: stitch, scissor, cut, etc. The image enables him to present a picture of dislocated surrogate city i.e. a substitute city for the native place of displace and dislocated i.e. refuges. The refugees appeal to Bombay to restore to the fire, symbolic of the warmth of peaceful domestic life. So, fire also refers to the rebuilding or remolding ones life.

The poet alludes to the violence that became reality due to chine’s aggression of Tibet. The image wearing ‘blood- red wool’ refers to the blood red colored woolen clothes which the Tibetans wear. It also directs our attention to their traditional vocation of selling woolen things like sweater, socks, caps etc. So, “Sea Breeze, Bombay” of Adil Jussawalla is a masterpiece in Indian poetry in English language and the poem has a social, political and historical theme with complete reality.  

Thank you                

Presented by Mohammad Baset Dorrazehi, Student of M.A English, Pune College, University of Pune. National Seminar on Indian Writing in English & in English Translation, Department of English, University of Pune, 25 - 27 of Feb, 2009.

Baloch Academy Of Humanities www.balochacademy.org