1 verses · ~1 min
इस गाढे अंधेरे में यों तो हाथ को हाथ नहीं सूझता लेकिन साफ़-साफ़ नज़र आता है: हत्यारों का बढता हुआ हुजूम, उनकी ख़ूंख़्वार आंखें, उसके तेज़ धारदार हथियार, उनकी भड़कीली पोशाकें मारने-नष्ट करने का उनका चमकीला उत्साह, उनके सधे-सोचे-समझे क़दम। हमारे पास अंधेरे को भेदने की कोई हिकमत नहीं है और न हमारी आंखों को अंधेरे में देखने का कोई वरदान मिला है। फिर भी हमको यह सब साफ़ नज़र आ रहा है। यह अजब अंधेरा है जिसमें सब कुछ साफ़ दिखाई दे रहा है जैसे नीमरोशनी में कोई नाटक के दृश्य। हमारे पास न तो आत्मा का प्रकाश है और न ही अंतःकरण का कोई आलोक: यह हमारा विचित्र समय है जो बिना किसी रोशनी की उम्मीद के हमें गाढे अंधेरे में गुम भी कर रहा है और साथ ही उसमें जो हो रहा है वह दिखा रहा है: क्या कभी-कभार कोई अंधेरा समय रोशनी भी होता है?
इति
The Poet
अशोक वाजपेयी
Ashok Vajpeyi
1941 · 2008
Ashok Vajpeyi occupies a towering position in contemporary Hindi letters as both a prolific poet and a master architect of cultural institutions. Born in 1941 in Durg, he joined the civil service and subsequently shaped India's modern arts landscape by founding institutions like Bharat Bhavan. Despite his immense public responsibilities, his poetry remains fiercely dedicated to the intimate and the personal. He views poetry as a civilizational defense against the crushing impersonality of the modern world. In collections like Shaher Ab Bhi Sambhavana Hai and his Sahitya Akademi Award winning Kahin Nahin Wahin, Vajpeyi explores the themes of love, death, nature, and absence with remarkable linguistic precision. He writes in free verse, employing a sparse and exact vocabulary to capture fleeting moments of domestic quiet or sudden metaphysical dread. His work has been translated across the globe, bringing modern Hindi sensibilities to a vast international audience. Vajpeyi demonstrates that a writer can navigate the complex machinery of the state while keeping the solitary flame of the poetic conscience brilliantly alive.
Paired Painting
The Rush of the Heroes
This magnificent canvas captures the thunderous chaos and visceral intensity of the Kurukshetra war, a catastrophic fratricidal conflict that forms the dramatic crux of the Mahabharata. Italian artist Giampaolo Tomassetti spent years immersing himself in the sacred literature of India, translating the monumental spiritual depth and poetic scale of the Sanskrit epic into a breathtaking neoclassical visual vocabulary. Amidst a turbulent cloud of dust and flying arrows, heroic chariots charge forward with unrelenting fury, and divine weapons streak across the sky like bolts of golden light. Every figure in the composition pulses with the terrible majesty of duty, fate, and mortal struggle, reminding the viewer of the eternal dharmic dilemmas that define the human condition.
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