The poet

For a piece in The Hindu Bussinessline, an interviewer introduced Vinod Kumar Shukla (विनोद कुमार शुक्ल) as ‘among the last of the greats in modern Hindi poetry’. I found this really amusing when I first read the interview because the poet and the language are both very much alive, and this read like an eulogy for both. It’s no wonder though that Shukla’s persona invites such enthusiastic introduction, his being one of the most unique voices in contemporary Hindi literature.

His work is sometimes said to belong to the genre of ‘magical realism’, a tag unsuitable for his body of work because, as the same interviewer notes while talking about on of his novels, “in stark contrast to magic-realist convention, there’s nothing unreal, or indeed magical, about the dreamlike aspects of the novel. In Shukla’s work, the dream is the reality.”

What is true about his novels is true also for his poems. The six poems that I have translated here all show in some respect the same thoughtful abstraction, the meandering tendency and the longing for the true nature of things which is visible in his other popular work.

The poems

जंगल के दिन भर के सन्नाटे में

In the day long silence of the forest

sound

of a mahua fruit falling

and every evening, with each fall

another star is seen

in the night sky

as if stars fall

onto the sky.

Then

the sky is full

like the forest is full.

Aadivasi girls, boys and women

go forth

to pick up the fallen mahua fruit

every morning

on daybreak

filling up the forest

like sunlight.

An aadivasi girl

picking mahua fruits

sees a tiger

like a tiger is seen

in the forest.

The tiger sees the aadivasi girl

like in a forest are seen

aadivasi girls

the forest birds

the butterflies. —

And the tiger

goes back to sleep

on dry leaves

once again, yawning.

An aadivasi girl alone

is not afraid

to go into the dark forest

is not afraid

of the beasts there

but is afraid

of going to the Gidam market

with her mahua fruits.

It’s market day.

Baskets of mahua on their heads

or on their shoulders

simple forest folk come

from all corners of the forest

climbing down from the hill

they all gather

under the big tree

and go to the market

together.

दरवाजा नहीं था मंदिर में

The temple had no doors

only a door shaped hole

cast in stone.

The unclear opening or closing of this door of no shape

I simply open.

You are late – she said.

She stood, set in stone

waiting for me, forver.

Then telling the forever tale for being late

I take a kathak pose

on her right side

standing

set in stone

forever-

standing forever

on the right side

of her perpetual wait.

Temples have a home for ever.

लड़की की इच्छा है

The girl wishes –

the river is so big.

A single drop from the river

one drop river

one drop deep

flown one drop long.

But the girl says

the pond is so big too.

A single drop from the pond

one drop pond

is one drop deep

is stationary one drop.

The girl’s wish is so small.

How small

the girl does not know.

तथा मैं परोक्ष हूँ

And I am remote –

I will tell you.

Not my voice

you will hear

its echo.

You will speak to me! and

I will hear

not what you say

but its echo.

Poem – I told myself.

What I hear, that is the echo

of what I told myself.

पिंजड़े में

In a cage

in my boss’s home

there is a parrot who goes

Clerk! Clerk!

The birds have an ancient script.

The rows of the birds in the evening sky

returning for reference, is a full sentence

this subject of returning is so much

that the sentence returns too.

From the window in my office

I said thanks

to those flying birds.

The thanks flew up to the birds.

First there was my thanks

and the rest were cranes

then there was her thanks

and all of them were cranes.

स्थिरता यदि पहाड़ न को

If stillness were not a mountain

then mountains would not be seen

and in our sight

the birds flying really high

would have been called a mountain.

A mountain is a

fossilized flight

that wings had set up

for the sky.

People without wings

I am one such

climbing flights

one at a time

with so many flights

fixed heights

and so many

so uneven.

There is a trail that leads

to the top of the mountain

I am afraid of

setting foot on it –

I am walking

behind a flying bird .

Birdie!

I am behind you!!

तथा आश्चर्य

And there is wonder,

so much wonder

that only one

was speaking a single truth.

He was telling it truly

and everyone was listening to his truth.

There was no one

who was not listening to his truth.

I wonder who he was?

The listeners

had gathered into a crowd

and all of them were Buddhas,

every single one,

the old and the elderly,

the men and women,

and even the children –

the children were not Siddharthas

they were Buddhas.

Notes

All of these poems are from the book “पचास कविताएँ: नयी सदी के लिए चयन”, a collection of selected poems from Vinod Kumar Shulkla’s work. It can be bought here. The featured image is from this article. People who can read Hindi can find some of his popular poems on Kavitakosh here.