न सिंकी हुई रोटी
और न माँ
'''1977 में रचित'''
'''और लीजिए, अब यही कविता अँग्रेज़ी में पढ़िए, अनुवादक हैं जगदीश नलिन'''
Anil Janvijay
To Father
Dear father
I do remember
Those days of my childhood
I
Used to play
With your soft,mild
Silky black hairs
With stiff,pinching black beard
Used to rub my gentle face again and again
I thought to see your black hairs
Why they are not white
Like the hairs of Shanta Clatz
Like cotton
Like snow
White
I repeatedly asked you
Father ! when will you be like Santa Claus?
And you gently smiled
Being lost in some imagination
Or thereafter
You called mother
And repeated my question
All the four directions
Started resounding altogether
With her laughter like the tinkling
Of thousands of bells
I do remember
You took me in your lap
And started throwing me up
Mother got afraid
The tinkling of bells seized
Directions became calm
Then mother picking me up
Took away with her
Gave me bread
Sweet
Baked brown bread
And today
You have become Santa Claus
Cotton like your hairs,your beard
And you yourself snow
The past swims
Like dream in your eyes
You remember those days
Those incidences of my childhood
Our rather small house
Baked bread
Mother
Your eyesight wanders
Hither and thither
Hopping like bird
Looking for something
But now
There are no those days
No house
No baked bread
And no mother
'''Translated into english by Jagdeesh Nalin'''
</poem>