Adil Jussawalla (1940- ) : A Portrait Of An Artist As The Missing Man Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Adil Jussawalla who wrote poetry
In the early sixties to start with Land's End (1962)
And carried to Missing Person (1974)
But missed from
And resurfaced he again
With his Trying to Say Goodbye in 2011.

A man who went to England
To read architecture
Returned back to
After a short teaching teaching
To be back to journalism
And freelancing.

Adil Jussawalla the man and poet,
A writer from Bombay,
Telling of the urban, cosmopolitan space,
City life and living,
Searching for values in broken rhythms.

A Parsi, breaking the ice
Of his psyche and space
He can with ease
About Eklavya, Karna too
Striking the roots of nativity.

Bombay, its sea breeze, Santa Cruz airport,
Partition woes, refugees
And their shelter,
He stitches the tales
For rehabilitation and rejuvenation.

A poet of the no-man
He himself the missing man,
Poetic fragmentation and broken imagery
And tidbits of thought and idea,
Gathers he the glass-pieces
To join and re-design verses.

The early years saw an upheaval
In terms of divided in between Europe and India
Trying to come to terms with,
Grappling after with
Anxiety, alienation and bewilderment
And loss.

A recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award
For Trying To Say Goodbye in 2014,
His The Right Kind of Dog and Other Poems is another
To follow it into footsteps,
A poet journalistic
Who wasted poetry for journalism.

But journalism too gave him the utmost
As had been the Editor of Debonair for a period
And also the Poetry Editor of it
For quite a long time
Promoting new poetry and poets
In its issues.

Jussawalla who taught at
St.Xavier's College, Bombay for some time
As a poet is situational, occasional,
Catching the nuance and idiosyncrasy,
A poet Audenesque, Joycean and Eliotesque.