AJWALI BAA - Sujata bhatt

About the Poet

 Sujata Bhatt ( Born 6 May 1956, Ahmedabad, India) is an Indian poet.She is the recipient of various awards, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Cholmondeley Award.She has published six collection of poems, including Monkey Shadows (1991) and Augatora (2000), both Poetry Book Society Recommendations; and A Colour for Solitude (2002), which deals exclusively with the life and work of the German painter Paula Modersohn-Becker. Her 2008 collection, Pure Lizard, was shortlisted for the 2008 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Poetry Collection of the Year. Her latest collection is Poppies in Translation (2015).

Overview of the Poem 

Ajwali baa is a short poem by Sujata Bhatt taken from her second collection of poems accommodated under title 'Monkey Shadows' published in the year 1991.Through this poem Ajwali Baa she highlights the problem of untouchability through a personal narrative by retelling the story of her grandparents. She heard this from her father during dinner at multiple occasions through which he wished to make some philosophical point un-understandable to poet.

Summary

The story unfolds at midnight almost at 1:00 am when the poet’s grandfather Nanabhai returns home after working whole day as usual with poors,trying to help the shunned community of Harijans in his own way.He opens the door and finds his wife Ajwali Baa blocking his way inside.The poet’s grandmother an orthodox Brahmin insists her husband to take a bathe with coldwater outside near the orchard before entering the house.He pleads not too , requesting he is too tired but she adamantly asking him to do so ,standing out of his reach so that he could not possibly pollute her with slightest touch by the filth he collected from being touched by other castes-impure to her especially those outcastes.Even the slightest touch of his shirt to her saree will send her fuming off in anger and to take another bath also wear fresher clothes,Knowing all this Nanabhai stands on the threshold of the door,thinking of her strict nature and believing she will not change her rules,he decides finally not to argue and sleep in the garden leaving Ajwali baa alone in the silence of house with her children sleeping oblivious to everything.

After contemplating for almost 10 minutes she runs towards courtyard,leaping down the steps towards mango yard joining him.The poet further continue the narrative by saying no one knows what made her grandmother change her mind and her father’s narration ends here to the spot they lie beside each other.But a film continues in the mind of the poet where she imagines her grandparents together with grandfather sleeping of exhaustionand her grandmother awake and alert without any sleep,thinking, evaluating and staring at the sky enjoying the game of the untangling of the stars and counting them into correct constellations.