By Bhavya Bhagtani

There exists a strange kind of translucence that is ubiquitous and panoramic, but often out of reach. An all-encompassing awareness that allows us to watch ourselves from a distance – how we navigate existence in the external world, observe and absorb the expansiveness of it all, and how, in turn, our internal world responds. While the two rarely ever converge, more often than not, we are either consciously or subconsciously looking for a meeting point. So, when a writer like Vinod Kumar Shukla comes along, and brings with him his gentle, laconic poeticism combined with a technique that simply yet magnificently bridges the gap between the external and the internal realms, a reader does not have much of a choice but to wholly surrender.

Born in 1937 in Rajnandgaon, a city in the state of Chhattisgarh in Central India, Vinod Kumar Shukla (phonetically pronounced ‘shook-l’) is one of the most important poets of modern Hindi literature. With work that spans over the course of more than five decades, Shukla has been awarded some of the highest national and international accolades, with his poetry and prose appearing in journals like Granta, Plume, Metamorphoses and elsewhere. In 1999, he was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award, one of the most significant literary honours of India. In 2023, PEN America awarded him the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. 

Last year, eminent translator and poet Arvind Krishna Mehrotra handpicked about seventy-five of Shukla’s poems from his extensive body of work and put together the first translated collection of his poetry, Treasurer of Piggy Banks (Circumference Books, 2024). The book is divided into multiple sections, each section containing poems from bigger collections that were originally released under the same titles in Hindi. 

Shukla’s poems have an odd, almost outlandish matter-of-factness about them. His work arrives quietly, knocks on the door of your spirit, and becomes a portal to the vastness within. His use of language is minimal, succinct and rarely ornate. There is a distillation in how these poems are written, wherein, no matter how hard I try, there is not a single word that I can deem extra or unnecessary. 

Shukla has an affinity for the simplest truths. Intricacies that may seem ordinary in passing but when pondered, reveal spectacular undercurrents. It is a cosmic, nebulous study of human behaviour, a poetic examination of the psyche intertwined with a fragile investigation of the nature of time. 

The first section, Almost Jai Hind, contains poems from his first Hindi collection, Lagbhag Jai Hind, that was published in 1971. One of the most striking poems in this section, “A small green parrot,” is a short, evocative meditation on the oneness of nature:

A small green parrot
flew down from the sky
(as if in the sky
a green shoot had appeared)
and settled on a tree.
The tree was luxuriantly green.
After this, I couldn’t see the parrot.
Only the tree.
(39)

There is a delicacy with which Shukla incorporates metamorphosis in his work. Oftentimes, in multiple poems, an object merges with another while also maintaining a distinct individuality. There is spillage too, but it is never messy. Quite like Van Gogh’s brushstrokes, existence, through Shukla’s lens, is largely untethered and in a perennial state of movement. 

Shukla tackles time and its linearity (or the lack thereof) with nuanced cleverness. He seldom relies on metaphors, and states what is as it is, giving the poems a subliminal texture, thereby effortlessly illuminating the most ordinary realities. The poem “Continuously” is an exquisite contemplation of the transience of time. Here is how is begins:

Continuously,
at regular intervals
one dry leaf after another
falls from the tree.
Which is why
I mutter under my breath
that the tree is a wristwatch.
A friend overhears me.
It takes time to tell the time.
A dry leaf falls
as though it were a second.
(41)

The next section is from the collection that was published in 1981, titled, Wah Aadami Naya Garam Coat Pahinkar Chala Gaya Vichar Ki Tarah/That Man Put On A New Woolen Coat And Went Away Like A Thought. This is also the title of one of his poems and is a quintessential summation of Shukla’s style. In both his poems and his prose, the physical merges with the metaphysical, as the characters and their surroundings lose their contours, evolving into illusory, ethereal entities. Somewhat Daliesque in nature, Shukla’s writing interacts with natural elements on a visceral level, challenging the conventions of rationality and elevating the reader into a state of profound oneiric absurdity. The poem “When I tossed a bunch of keys” starts with the following lines:

When I tossed a bunch of keys
in the air,
I saw
the sky open.
(47)

There is a relentless world-making. To add tangibility to the intangible and vice versa. To push beyond the horizons of logic not with force, but with childlike curiosity. 

Another journey that Shukla’s writing often embarks upon is that of unveiling the multidimensional, more cavernous meanings behind the concept and idea of home. There are poems that seem to be in conversation with Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, as Shukla closely inspects his inner ethos in tandem with his immediate physical surroundings, searching for the feeling of home. Consequentially, his poem, “A five-year-old girl,” ends with the line, “Even at home I miss my home” (55).

There also are in-depth explorations of some of the most elusive philosophical vortexes. At the centre of it all is an enigmatic sense of humor. This humor is often literal and direct and other times, subtle and flickering. It is never superficial, but is anchored instead in deeper, more poignant truths. His poem, “A city person,” throws light upon the stark realities of life in the densely populated big cities of India. It’s about the rut and suffocation of a city which is often dehumanizing to the point where it becomes normal to mistake even a tree for a commuter waiting in line to board a bus:

Now I’m an educated man.
When the bus arrived
I waited for the tree to get on first
when it struck me that trees
do not board buses. 
(57)

Shukla’s poems oscillate. They sway back and forth like a pendulum, but the sequence and chronology are conceived by him. The poems create a whirlpool of introspections, while simultaneously bringing the reader to a state of stasis, encumbering them in the kind of equilibrium that can only arise from chaos. Call it imagination, or an impervious childhood. In Shukla’s universe, magic exists everywhere—albeit often in faint flickers, never invisible. 

To find absurdities in the everyday and crystallize them is what Shukla does best. His articulation is tender but commanding. His voice calmly instructs, urging the reader to trust him. While some of what these poems capture can feel unusual and dare I say illogical, it is through these anomalies that the crystallization happens. 

Often, writers writing in any language apart from English seldom make it to the limelight in India, which, considering the nation’s population of over 1.4 billion people, is bizarre. This is because the English language is pedestalized, despite there being more than 19,500 dialects and 121 officially recognized languages in the country. Hindi, as well as any regional literature, often has a readership of no more than 30,000-50,000 people. In such dismal circumstances, when a writer doesn’t just write in Hindi, but also imbues surrealism and magical realism in his work, while simultaneously making his poems relatable and accessible, it sets an indispensable benchmark. 

The next two sections, Atiriqt Nahin/Nothing Surplus and Kabhi Ke Baad Abhi/After Then Comes Now, elevate Shukla’s syllogism to an even higher level, where the poems exhibit a kind of a cerebral finesse in how neatly they sum up some of the most riddling conundrums of life. The paradoxes of leaving a place and arriving at another; of what is said and what is heard; of the past, the present, and the future constantly embodying each other—these poems act as crutches that help us understand our ephemerality while also acting as catalysts of that very understanding. The poem “I’m about to arrive” sums it up perfectly:

Until I arrive, it’ll seem
that I’ve almost arrived,
as if I were arriving at the end of arriving.
(93)

Shukla inhabits a vast, luminous solitude. On reading the poems with close attention, it is evident that he has resided there longer than he has resided anywhere else. He has found, at the centre of this solitary liminality, the art of conversing with his effulgent inner self. The poem “Who’s There?” in After Then Comes Now is a brilliant example:

“Who’s there?”
I ask, and my face turns pale.
“There’s no one,” is the answer I get.
I am the one giving it.
(143)

The penultimate section of the book, Nayi Aevam Asangrahit Kavitayein/New And Uncollected Poems, consists of some of his recent work, work that has not yet been published in a larger collection. The poems, as always, metamorphosize and philosophize while simultaneously offering a loamy foundation from which we, as readers, can view the wonderful, glimmering whimsicalities that are scattered all around us. Here’s an excerpt from “Not with my own feet,” one of my favourite poems in this section:

When I wake, it’s from everyone’s sleep,
When I sleep, it’s under everyone’s eyelids.
Far from being alone,
I’m a large gathering,
and I’m each person in it.
(157)

The final section is a welcome bonus. It offers a peek into Shukla’s quirkier, more light-hearted take on poetry. Poems for Children contains pieces that are small and taut, barely extending beyond a stanza. These poems are visual, playful and intelligent:

A word
(bird)
in a parenthetical
nest
(179)

Shukla’s knack for capturing contradictions comes cloaked in an ease not many have mastered. He possesses a refined eloquence that does not rely on complication. While Mehrotra’s translations do a terrific job of preserving the essence of most of Shukla’s work, there are times when the translated version feels slightly distant from the original. 

Despite that, this collection is vital not only because it brings to us some of the most compelling work of one of India’s greatest contemporary writers, but also for the milestone it sets in the sphere of making regional literature available and palatable for the western reader, while proving itself to be a splendid testimony to Shukla’s prowess.