No Full Stops

It was this detached demeanour that propelled Shah onto the front pages of newspapers during the Gujarat riots of 2002. His comments8212;8216;8216;I am not sad about whatever has happened8230;8217;8217;8212;sent the literary world into a tizzy. Mahasweta Devi, the doyenne of Bengali poetry and a jury member of the Jnanpith Award, said, 8216;8216;Shah8217;s comments are most regrettable.8217;8217;

The 91-year-old says he was misquoted, but clarifies, 8216;8216;I said I was not affected by the riots. A reporter likened it to Nero fiddling while Rome was burning. Did they expect me to go on the streets and fire-fight?

8220;For me,8217;8217; says Shah candidly, 8216;8216;the riots were just a phase of life in the city. I was not provoked to write or react.8217;8217;

Age may have affected his hearing, but Shah is sharp as ever as his son joins in to facilitate conversation. It8217;s ironic because the poet has always captured sights and sounds and his first collection in 1951, considered a pioneering effort in Gujarati poetry, was called Dhwani Sound.

With 25 collections of poetry and translations the latest came out in September, Shah8217;s most famous work is Aayushyanaa Avsheshe At the End of Life, a collection of five sonnets published in 1948. When Shah showed this collection to BK Thakur, an eminent Gujarati critic not known for his magnanimity, in 1951, the latter raved: 8216;8216;These sonnets are worth embroidering on a silky canvas.8217;8217;

Songs, ghazals, sonnets. Shah has experimented with almost all forms of poetry. Though he participated in the freedom struggle on Mahatma Gandhi8217;s call, his poems sang a different tune. 8216;8216;He doesn8217;t give a message. Like Tagore, he is engaged in self-discovery. He is a sadhak seeker,8217;8217; says Mumbai-based poet-critic Prabodh Parikh.

His earlier poems talk of the joys and sorrows of the tribals of Thane, where he worked in the late 1940s. 8216;8216;I was an agent for a timber merchant and travelled extensively to the forests,8217;8217; Shah reminisces. 8216;8216;While commuting from my home in Bhuleshwar South Mumbai to Thane and back, I would write poetry.8217;8217;

He would have been just another grocer in Ahmedabad had he not moved to Mumbai in 1945. He founded a printing press in the 8217;50s where he held weekly sessions for young poets, and started Kavilok, the first Gujarati bimonthly about poets and poetry.

8216;8216;I had a childhood wish to retire at 56,8217;8217; Shah says. 8216;8216;I was struck with typhoid at exactly 56, and retired to native Kapadvanj, near Ahmedabad.8217;8217;

Retirement is hardly the right word. Kaivalya, a poet in his own right, quotes his own couplet: Jo guzar gaya main woh waqt hoon/Tere saath waqt chala kare I am the time gone by/But you are evergreen. 8216;8216;It applies to my dad,8217;8217; he says.