Pratishtha Pandya

Umesh Solanki

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P. Sainath

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All my life I have been rowing
this boat day and night with no shore in
sight. That is how vast the
ocean is and then the storms; nothing here tells me
that I will reach the other
side. But I can’t just can’t put these oars down.

And he did not, not even in the last moments of his
life when he was fighting a losing battle with lung cancer.



It was painful. He often had difficulty breathing.
Joints were aching. There were issues of anaemia, weight loss, and more. He
could not sit for long without feeling absolutely drained. But Vajesinh Pargi agreed
to meet us in his hospital room and speak to us about life and poetry. 

 A life that was never kind to him from the
time he was born, 1963 according to his Aadhaar card – in a poor Bhil Adivasi community in Dahod’s
Itawa village. 



Summing up his experiences of growing up as the eldest
son of Chiska Bhai and Chatura Ben, Vajesinh repeats just one word, like a
refrain, “poverty…poverty.” A brief pause. He turns his face the other way,
rubbing his sunken eyes, unable to get rid of those images from his childhood
darting across his vision like stubborn floaters. “There was never enough money
for food in the house.”

Life will come to an
end but not this daily
rut. The radius of the roti is way bigger than that of the
earth. No one but those who live with hunger know how much one roti
means, where all it takes you.

“I should not say that, but we had parents we could
not be proud of,” Vajesinh confesses. And his already frail frame shrinks even
more under the weight of deep anguish and shame, “I know I should not be saying
such things, but it just came out, I guess.” His old mother, about 85, sitting
on a tin stool in one corner of the small room in Dahod’s Kaizar Medical
Nursing Home is hard of hearing. “I only saw my parents struggle. Mother and
father worked in the fields as labourers.” His two sisters, four
brothers, and parents lived in a small, one-room, brick and mud house in the
village. Even when Vajesinh left Itawa and came to Ahmedabad in search of
employment, he lived in a little rented hole in the wall in Thaltej chawl. A
place even his closest friends rarely got to visit.

If I stand I hit the roof If I straighten up I hit the wall. I somehow spent a
lifetime here, confined. What came to my aid was the habit of curling up inside my mother’s womb.

The story of deprivation is not Vajesinh’s alone;
it is an old and common one in the region where the poet&#39;s family lives.
About 74
per cent of the
population in Dahod district consists of Scheduled Tribes, with 90 per cent of
them engaged in agriculture. But the small size of plots and low productivity
of the land, largely dry and drought-prone, does not ensure an adequate income.
And the poverty rate in the region has remained the highest in the state at 38.27
per cent according to the
latest multidimensional poverty survey.



“Ghani takli kari ne mota kariya se e lokone
dhandha kari kari ne,” says Vajesinh’s mother Chaturaben, speaking about
her life as a mother. “Majhoori karine, ghernu karine, bijhanu karine
khavadyu chh. [I have done hard labour. Worked at home, worked at other’s
and somehow got them something to eat.]” They have lived on only jowar porridge
at times, have gone to school hungry. It was never easy to bring up the
children, she says.

In the two-part memoir he wrote for a 2009 issue of
Nirdhar, a magazine dedicated to the voices of the deprived communities from
Gujarat, Vajesinh narrates the story of a large-hearted Adivasi family. Jokho
Damor and his family stay hungry to feed the young boys they were hosting that
evening. Speaking of this incident where five of them were caught in the heavy
rains on their way back from school and had sought shelter in Jokho’s house,
Vajesinh says, “Bhadarvo was always the month of starvation for us.”
Bhadarvo is the eleventh month of the Hindu Vikram Samvat calendar prevalent
in Gujarat, usually coinciding with September in the
Gregorian calendar. 



“The stored grain in the house would run out; those in
the fields would not be ready yet, and so, to starve even when the fields
were green was our fate. It was only in some rare houses that you would find
the hearth burning twice a day in those months. And if the previous year had
seen drought, many families would have to survive on boiled or roasted mahua.
Dire poverty was a curse that our community was born into.”

But unlike the present
generation, says Vajesinh, people those days would rather wilt and die of
starvation than leave their home and their villages and migrate to Kheda,
Baroda, or Ahmedabad in search of labour. Education was not much valued in the
community. “Whether we went to graze the animals or went to school, it was all
the same. Even our parents and teachers only wanted one thing – let the kids
learn to read and write. That is all. Who wants to study more and rule the
world here!” 



Vajesinh, though, had dreams – of
flying with the trees, chatting with the birds, flying on the wings of the
fairies across the seas. He had hopes – of the deities rescuing him from troubles,
of witnessing the victory of truth and defeat of lies, of finding God on the
side of the meek, just like it was in the stories Grandfather told. But life
turned out to be quite the opposite of a fanciful tale.

And yet the hope that Grandfather sowed in my childhood – something wonderful is possible – remained firm. That is the reason I live this unbearable life even today, everyday, in the hope that something miraculous is about to happen.

It is this hope that made him
struggle for his education throughout his life. Once he was on the path to
education, almost accidentally, he pursued it with passion. Even when he had to
walk for six to seven kilometres to reach school, or to stay in a hostel, or go to
sleep hungry, or wander from house to house asking for food, or buy a bottle of
alcohol for the principal. He was sure to continue it even when there was no higher
secondary school in the village, no modes of transport to commute to Dahod, no
money to rent a place in Dahod. He did it even when it meant doing construction
work to meet the expenses, spending nights at the railway platform, sleeping
and waking up hungry, using the public bathrooms to get ready before appearing
for the board exams.



Vajesinh was determined not to be defeated by
life:

Often while living I feel giddy the heart skips a beat and I collapse. And yet every time rising inside me is the lively resolve to not die and I find myself back on my feet ready to live again and again.

The real education,
the part that he enjoyed the most began when he joined Navjeevan Arts and
Commerce College, for a B.A. in Gujarati. He completed
his Bachelor’s degree and registered for a Masters. However, after the first
year of M.A. Vajesinh quit, decided to do a B.Ed. instead. He needed money and
he wished to be a teacher. Just after he cleared his B.Ed. Vajesinh was caught
off guard in the middle of a fight, a bullet ripped through the then young
Adivasi’s jaw and neck. The accident proved life changing as Vajesinh’s voice
too suffered with the injury from which he never recovered, not even after seven years of treatment, 14 surgeries, and an insurmountable debt.

That was a double blow. Born into a
community that had little voice in the first place, the one he was personally
gifted with was also now seriously damaged. He had to give up on his dream of
becoming a teacher and turn to labour, contractual work in Sardar Patel
Institute of Economic and Social Research, and later to proof reading. It is in
his work as a proofreader that Vajesinh was reunited with his first love – bhasha.
He got to read a lot that was written over two decades. 



And what were his observations? 



“Let me tell you very openly what
I think about language,” he says speaking with gusto. “The Gujarati literati are
completely careless about language. The poets don’t show any sensitivity toward
the use of words; most of them only write ghazals and all they care
about is emotion. They think that is what is important. Words are all right; they
are there.” It is this nuanced understanding of words, their arrangements, and
their power to express certain experiences that Vajesinh brought to his own
poems, complied in two volumes that remained unappreciated and unrecognised by
mainstream literature. 



“I guess you need to write more
consistently,” he rationalises on why he has never been considered a poet to reckon
with. “If I write a poem or two, who is going to care? These two collections
are recent. I did not write for fame. I could not write regularly either. I did
not even write very seriously, I feel. Hunger was woven into our lives, so I
wrote about it. It was just a natural expression.” He remains self-effacing throughout
our conversation – unwilling to apportion blame, unwilling to open old wounds,
unwilling to claim his share of light. But he was fully aware that…

Someone has certainly swallowed our share of light, for we keep burning ourselves out along with the sun for a lifetime and still nothing ever gets illuminated.

The prejudice, the
undervaluing of his skills, and the differential treatment marked his
professional life as a proofreader. Once, even after clearing an entrance test
with an &#39;A&#39; grade at a media house, he was offered a position on a pay scale considerably
lower than the one offered to those who passed with a &#39;C&#39; grade. Vajesinh was
disturbed; he questioned the principles behind such a decision. And in the end refused
to take the offer.

In Ahmedabad he worked on small
contracts with different media houses for a pittance. Kirit Parmar was writing
for Abhiyan when he first met Vajesinh. He says, “in 2008 when I had joined
Abhiyan, Vajesinh was working in Sambhav Media. Officially he was a proofreader,
but we knew that when we gave him an article, he would edit the copy. He worked
with the content to give the piece a structure and a shape. He had an amazing
way with language as well. But that man never got his due, no opportunity that
he deserved.” 



He earned barely 6,000 rupees a
month in Sambhav. The money that he made was never enough to take care of his
family, the education of his brothers and sisters and to sustain a life in
Ahmedabad. He started taking on freelance work with Image publications and
worked from home after long days at the office. 



“He was my father and not a
brother from the time we lost our father,” says his youngest brother Mukesh
Pargi, 37. “Vajesinh bore all the expenses for my education even in the most
gruelling times. I remember him staying in a broken little room in Thaltej. On
the tin roofs above his room, we would hear dogs running around all night long.
In the 5000-6000 [rupees] that he earned, he could hardly look after himself,
but he did other work just so that he could pay for our education. I cannot
forget that.” 



In the last five-six years Vajesinh
joined a private company in Ahmedabad that offered proofreading services. “I worked
on contract for most of my life. The most recent is with Cygnet Infotech. Gandhiji’s
Navajeevan press had a contract with them and so I ended up working on the
books they published. Before Navajeevan I worked with other publications,” says
Vajesinh. “But no publisher in Gujarat has a permanent position for a
proofreader.” 



In a <a href="https://kikasakari.blogspot.com/2009/05/blog-post.html">conversation</a> with Kirit Parmar, a friend and a writer, he says, “One of the reasons
why it is so difficult to find good proofreaders in Gujarati is poor
remuneration. A proofreader is the guardian, an advocate of language. How come
we do not respect the work and pay them appropriately? We are becoming an
endangered species. And whose loss is it, but that of Gujarati language.”
Vajesinh saw the sad state of Gujarati media houses. They did not respect language
and anyone who could read and write was good enough to be a proofreader.



“The false idea that is prevalent in the
literary world,” says Vajesinh, “is that a proofreader does not have knowledge,
capabilities, or creativity.” He on the other hand remained a guardian of
Gujarati language. “Gujarat Vidyapeeth published a supplement to Sarth Jodani Kosh
[a well-known dictionary] for 5,000 new words to be included in the Kosh,”
Kirit Bhai reminisces, “And there were terrible mistakes in it – not just of
spellings but factual errors, and of details. Vajesinh meticulously noted all
of these and argued for accountability. I do not see anyone in Gujarat today
who can do the kind of work Vajesinh did. He even wrote about the mistakes he
found in State board’s school textbooks of grade 6, 7, 8.”

With all his talent and capabilities,
the world still remained a hostile place for Vajesinh to live in. And yet he wrote
of hope and resilience. He knew he had to live with his own resources. He had
given up on God long ago.

I am born with hunger in one hand and labour in the other, Tell me, where do I get a third
hand to worship you, O lord?

Poetry often came to replace God in
Vajesinh’s life. He published two volumes of poems, Aagiyanu Ajwalun (The light
of the fireflies), in 2019 and Jhakalna Moti (Pearls of Dewdrops), in 2022 and a
few poems in his mother tongue <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/an-adivasi-writes-off-the-village/">Panchamahali
Bhili</a>.At the
end of a life full of injustice, exploitation, discrimination, and deprivation
his poems bear no sign of resentment or anger. There are no complaints. “Where
would I have complained? To the society? We cannot complain to the society;
they will wring our necks,” he says. 



Through poetry Vajesinh found the
possibility to rise beyond the individual circumstances and connect with the
real truth about the human condition. The failure of Adivasi and Dalit
literature in the present, according to him, was its lack of breadth. “I read some
Dalit literature and I find there is a lack of a larger human connect. It is
all about complaining about the atrocities inflicted on us. But where do we go
from there? Adivasis voices have just come up. They too speak a lot about their
own lives. The larger questions are never raised,” he says. 



A poet and a writer from Dahod
Pravin Bhai Jadav says, “as a young boy growing up I used to read books and
wonder why there were no poets from our community, our region. It was only 2008
that I first came across Vajesinh’s name in a collection. It took me four years
to eventually find the man! And it took a while to get him to meet me. He was
not a poet of mushairas. His poems spoke of our pain, the lives of the
marginalised.”



Poetry came to Vajesinh during
his college years. There was no time for any serious pursuit or training. “Poems
keep churning in my mind all day long,” he explains. “They are the restless
expression of my being that sometimes find expression and sometimes escape. So
much of it has remained unexpressed. I cannot hold a lengthy process in my mind. That is why I chose the form that I
did. And still a lot of poems remained unwritten.”



A life-threatening illness, lung cancer, in the
last two years just added more to the pile of unwritten poems. And when one looks at the life of Vajesinh
and his achievements in the face of suffering, one begins to realise what all
has remained unwritten. The ‘flickering light of fireflies’ that he held on to
not just for himself, but for his community, has remained unwritten. His ‘dewdrop
pearls’ that bloomed without the protective oyster in his hand remain unwritten.
The miraculous properties of a voice that retained compassion and empathy in a
cruel, unkind world remain unwritten. The name of Vajesinh Pargi among the list
of the finest poets in our language has remained unwritten.

But Vajesinh has never been a
poet of revolution. For him, words were not even sparks.

I lie here waiting for that one gust of wind



So what if I am a pile of ashes I am no fire I cannot burn even a blade of
grass. but I will certainly get into
their eyes. and irritate, I can get at least one of them to rub them red. 



And now, left as we are with about
70 unpublished poems, more powerful irritants for our eyes and our conscience, we too await that gust of wind.



Jhooladi*



When I was a child Bapa got me a jhooladi it shrank after the first wash, lost its colour, and the threads came loose. I didn’t like it anymore. I threw a fit – I don’t want to wear this jhooladi. Ma stroked my head and coaxed me, “wear it till it tears, child. we will get a new one then,
okay?” Today this body hangs like the jhooladi I hated. There are wrinkles all over, the joints are melting, I tremble as I breathe and my mind throws a fit – I don’t want this body anymore! Just as I try to shed the frame I remember ma and her sweet talk
– “wear it till it tears, child! Once it is gone… Translated from his unpublished Gujarati poem. *Jhooladi is a traditional embroidered upper garment worn by children in Adivasi communities.

The writer expresses her immense
gratitude to Vajesinh Pargi for speaking to us just a few days before his
passing. Thanks also to Mukesh Pargi, to poet and social activist Kanji Patel, editor of Nirdhar Umesh Solanki, Vajesinh’s friend and writer Kirit Parmar,
and a teacher from Galaliyavad Primary school, Satish Parmar for their help in
making this piece possible. 



All the poems used in this article are written
by Vajesinh Pargi in Gujarati and are translated into English by Pratishtha
Pandya.

Vajesinh Pargi: a life in letters, and worse

کبھی شکست تسلیم نہ کرنے والا گجراتی شاعر

వజేసింగ్ పార్గీ: అనంతాక్షరపథంలో కవి జీవితం

வஜேசிங் பார்கி: எழுத்துகளில் ஒரு வாழ்க்கை

ਵਜੈ ਸਿੰਘ ਪਾਰਗੀ: ਮੈਂ ਚੱਪੂ ਲਾਂਭੇ ਵੀ ਨਹੀਂ ਰੱਖ ਸਕਦਾ

ବଜେସିଂହ ପାର୍ଗି: ଯନ୍ତ୍ରଣାରେ ଭରା ଜୀବନ, ରଚନାରେ ତୀବ୍ର ପ୍ରତିଫଳନ

वाजेसिंह नावाचं ‘संघर्ष’काव्य

വജേസിംഗ് പാർഗി: അക്ഷരവും ക്ഷതവുംകൊണ്ട് ഒരു ജീവിതം

ವಜೇಸಿಂಗ್‌ ಪಾರ್ಗಿ: ಒಂದು ಪದ-ಪದ್ಯ ನಮನ

वजेसिंह पारगी: ठंडी राख में धधकते कोयले सा कवि

वजेसिंह पारगी: जुड़ाय राख भीतरी धधकत कवि

वजेसिंह पारगी: राख के आखर से भूख लिखे वाला कवि

অনন্তের পথে অক্ষর কারিগর, কবি ওয়াজেসিং পারগি

আশাময় জীৱনৰ অনন্তমালা গাঁথি ৱজেসিং গ’ল: কবিতাবোৰ নিনাদিত হ’ল

વજેસિંહ પારગી: અક્ષરોમાં વિખરાયેલું જીવન

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ہمارے بارے میں جانیں

پاری میں آپ کا خیرمقدم ہے

گے۔ اگر آپ کو ہمارا کام پسند ہے، تو آپ ہمارے رضاکار بن کر ہمارا تعاون کر سکتے ہیں یا ہماری مالی مدد کر سکتے ہیں، تاکہ ہم اپنا کام جاری رکھ سکیں۔

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Vajesinh Pargi: a life in letters, and worse

An Adivasi poet from Gujarat, Vajesinh Pargi, died on September 23, 2023. From the margins of mainstream Gujarati literature to which he was relegated, he wrote powerful poems about hope, hardships, and hunger. A tribute to the fine poet who wrote in Panchmahali Bhili and Gujarati

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