welcome, friends

dear friends,

i am a gujarati dalit poet venturing for the first time to express
on net my thoughts and views and feelings - mostly in poetry
but occasionally in prose too.

i welcome you all to read and respond/react - by posting your
own poetry or prose as you wish. The common concern for
the victimised and despised community called dalits should
be our longer lasting tie as friendly bloggers.

To begin with, may i post a short poem :


The Song of Our Shirt

We are a fashionable caste
or tribe you may call :

our forefather Mayo Dhed
had a shirt of 3 sleeves,

his father had a shroud as his shirt
and his father wore a shirt of his own skin.

I am no less fashionable -
just got a pocketless, sleevesless, buttonless,
Peter England, the Second
from the pavements I sweep.

Every passer-by is tempted to pay his respects
to the label of the lords
but without touching my collar-bone.

Our shirt has a song to sing
of bizarre fashions.

*

Note :

In medieval Gujarat, untouchables were forced to wear
3-sleeved shirt so that caste Hindus can identify them
and keep away from them.
The dalit folklore has a hero called Mayo Dhed who sacrificed
his life for doing away with such humiliating practice.