3 verses · ~1 min
आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ भरी दुपहरी में अंधियारा सूरज परछाई से हारा अंतरतम का नेह निचोड़ें- बुझी हुई बाती सुलगाएँ। आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ
हम पड़ाव को समझे मंज़िल लक्ष्य हुआ आंखों से ओझल वतर्मान के मोहजाल में- आने वाला कल न भुलाएँ। आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ।
आहुति बाकी यज्ञ अधूरा अपनों के विघ्नों ने घेरा अंतिम जय का वज़्र बनाने- नव दधीचि हड्डियां गलाएँ। आओ फिर से दिया जलाएँ
इति
The Poet
अटल बिहारी वाजपेयी
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
1924 · 2018
History offers, very rarely, the spectacle of a man who carries two entirely distinct and equally demanding vocations simultaneously, not one masking the other, not one subordinate to the other, but both fully alive and fully authentic. Atal Bihari Vajpayee was statesman and poet with equal integrity, and this duality was not a paradox to be explained but a wholeness to be witnessed. As Prime Minister, he navigated nuclear tests, Kargil, the Lahore Bus Yatra, and the complex geopolitics of a rising nation with a gravity and steadiness that history continues to assess. But when he set down the instruments of power and lifted the pen, he became something else entirely, a solitary voice in conversation with the deepest questions of existence. His poems do not announce themselves. They arrive quietly, like a man who has seen too much to need to raise his voice. They speak of loneliness within crowds, of the strange distance between public duty and private grief, of the question that haunts every thinking person who has wielded great responsibility: what was it all for? Born on Christmas Day in Gwalior in 1924, Vajpayee passed into the ages in 2018, leaving a dual inheritance, a republic he helped steady, and a body of verse that ensured the man beneath the statesman would never be forgotten.
Paired Painting
Birth of Draupadi from the Holy Fire
In the sacred tradition of the Mahabharata, Draupadi does not emerge from the womb, but rather from the blazing intensity of a holy sacrificial fire, known as the Yajna. This image captures the profound moment of her manifestation, as the fire, intended to bless King Drupada with an heir, yields a woman of immense divinity and strength. The surrounding figures, including the sages and the king, gaze upon her with awe, acknowledging that she is not merely a princess, but an avatar of divine will destined to change the course of history. Her appearance from the flames signifies her connection to the cosmic order and her future role as a central, transformative force in the epic narrative.
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