Renowned Gujarati poet and essayist Anil Joshi passes away at 85

Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to X and said, “Saddened to hear the news of the demise of Anil Joshi… His contribution to modern Gujarati literature will always be remembered… Prayers for the peace of the departed soul and condolences to the bereaved family and readers…”

Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel took to X to pay a tribute to Joshi and said, “I express deep sorrow at the demise of renowned Gujarati poet, lyricist and essayist Anil Joshi ji. His passion for creativity and works that touched human life will remain alive in the hearts of the readers. May God rest his soul in peace and give his family and well wishers, readers the strength to overcome the loss.”

Joshi’s first poem was published in 1962, in a Gujarati cultural magazine, Kumar, while he was still in college in Morbi. The poem was about nature, and was well appreciated. He published his first Gujarati poetry collection titled Kadach in 1970, following which he migrated to Mumbai. He worked as a documentation expert for the Commerce Weekly, living with a friend, Ramesh Dave, for a year. Mumbai gave Joshi his good friends, including Javed Akhtar, Dharamveer Bharti, and Vrunda Karandikar.

Joshi’s poems continued to appear in magazines like Kavita and Navneet Sangam, highlighting the aspects of life in a city and the longing for country life and nature. In 1982, he published his second Gujarati collection titled Baraf na Pankhi.

In a poem titled Bombay, Joshi speaks of the “per square feet rate for burial”. In 1988, he published his collection of 20 lyrical essays, titled Statue, for which he was awarded the 1990 Sahitya Akademi Award. Statue, which was also translated into other languages, suggests that life is an outcome of the popular game of “statue”. The essays speak of the game, in which the word is uttered by a player to freeze all other players in a moment of time until a command revokes the frozen state. Joshi, through his essays, suggests that “God can freeze movements by one command. Following the same rule of the game, we too have frozen the movements of God by putting him in temples.” One essay, “Statue ramvani maza” (The fun of playing statue), blends storytelling, narration, and poetry. In the essay, Joshi remembers his playmate Jhina Bharvad, who successfully escaped the “statue” commands during the playful games, but was one day “frozen forever” by a live electric wire. The essay says, “Who could tell why he became a statue without our telling so?” In fact, the first essay of the book Statue, “Kabari”, highlights the plight of the cow, abandoned to die the moment it stops yielding milk.

Several of Joshi’s poems have been included in Gujarati school textbooks. Joshi’s collection of essays, Pavan ni Vyaspitha, was also chosen for the Gujarat Sahitya Akademi award in 1990. However, he rejected the award for this particular work, as in March that year, a 16-year-old girl was set afire in an examination hall by her classmate in the presence of teachers and other students. Joshi had said that he rejected the award as the inclusion of the essay in school textbooks “felt meaningless” and “could not influence children in a positive way”.

Joshi was fluent in Marathi and often identified himself as a “Marathi writer” and a resident of  Borivali in Mumbai. He was appointed language officer of municipal schools in the slum area under the Brihanmumbai (formerly Bombay) Corporation from 1976 to 1998, and also became the Vice Chairman of the Maharashtra Rajya Gujarati Sahitya Akademi. A public spat with Shiv Sena supremo Balasaheb Thackeray who said that writers are “bazarache bikau bail (sellable bulls of the bazaar)” meant that Joshi tendered his resignation from the municipal post.

He also served as a Director and Language officer of a Language Development Project for municipal schools in slum areas of the then Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC), at the offer of the then Municipal Commissioner B G Deshmukh from 1976 to 1998.  Joshi was also the Director of the Antarbharti project of the Bombay Community Public Trust, where he worked to enhance the cosmopolitan culture of Mumbai, bringing together Marathi and Gujarati writers on one interactive platform.

His works include a collection of children’s stories and fables titled Chakli Bole Chi Chi Chi. One story, of a small girl Tina, who fills the Mumbai sea in her pot, and sparks a mad search for the missing sea, has been widely acclaimed.

Joshi, who briefly lived in Vadodara until around 2017, returned the 1990 Sahitya Akademi award conferred upon him for Statue on October 11, 2015, in protest against the attack on literary writers.

Joshi had told The Indian Express that although he was honoured about being conferred with the Sahitya Akademi award at the hands of Gangadhar Gadgil in 1990, the “hateful atmosphere” had left “no breathing space and no freedom of expression” for literary writers. Joshi had told this newspaper, “It is like losing oxygen because we are writers who wish for free breathing space. I do not need an oxygen cylinder in the form of awards to live. The attack on the brood of literarians is unfortunate and has taken away the freedom of expression. (The deaths of) Dr MM Kalburgi, Narendra Dabholkar, and Govind Pansare were not isolated cases.”

Former Professor of English, MS University of Baroda, and literary critic Ganesh Devy remembers his close friend as the “most courageous” among Gujarati writers. Devy, who admires Joshi’s political satirical poems, told this newspaper, “He was witty and he could capture the imagination of his audience like a powerful magnet. His range of references was unique and never limited. His empathy for all religions was impeccable. It is a great loss for the Gujarati language and his demise has left a vacuum that can be hardly filled. His political satirical poems are the most outstanding… Rather than publishing his books, in the last 20 years, he was recollecting his individual poems through social media. Every time he wrote a new one, he sent him to me.”

Joshi is survived by his wife Bharati, son Sanket, and daughter Rachna.