4 verses · ~1 min
गडरिए कितने सुखी हैं ।
न वे ऊँचे दावे करते हैं न उनको ले कर एक दूसरे को कोसते या लड़ते-मरते हैं। जबकि जनता की सेवा करने के भूखे सारे दल भेडियों से टूटते हैं । ऐसी-ऐसी बातें और ऐसे-ऐसे शब्द सामने रखते हैं जैसे कुछ नहीं हुआ है और सब कुछ हो जाएगा ।
जबकि सारे दल पानी की तरह धन बहाते हैं, गडरिए मेंड़ों पर बैठे मुस्कुराते हैं ... भेडों को बाड़े में करने के लिए न सभाएँ आयोजित करते हैं न रैलियाँ, न कंठ खरीदते हैं, न हथेलियाँ, न शीत और ताप से झुलसे चेहरों पर आश्वासनों का सूर्य उगाते हैं, स्वेच्छा से जिधर चाहते हैं, उधर भेड़ों को हाँके लिए जाते हैं ।
गडरिए कितने सुखी हैं ।
इति
The Poet
दुष्यंत कुमार
Dushyant Kumar
1933 · 1975
Dushyant Kumar did something that required a radical courage most artists never summon. He took a form synonymous with moonlit nights and the ache of unfulfilled romance and dragged it into the burning lanes where injustice stank and the ordinary man had no language for his helplessness. Born in 1931 in Uttar Pradesh, he dismantled the ornamental tradition of the Urdu ghazal and rebuilt it in Hindi as a weapon of the dispossessed. His singular collection Saaye Mein Dhoop became one of the most quietly devastating documents in the entire tradition of modern Hindi literature. The Emergency of 1975 gave his verses a context that proved them prophetic. Unlike mere political poetry, his words outlasted their moment to become permanent fixtures in the vocabulary of Indian dissent. He wrote not with a scholar's distance but with the shaking hands of someone who had looked injustice in the face and refused to flinch. He died at forty four, leaving behind a body of work so concentrated and incandescent that its light has not dimmed in half a century. To read Dushyant Kumar is to understand that poetry's highest function is not consolation but confrontation.
Paired Painting
Elephant Khedda Operation
The canvas captures the dramatic and deeply traditional spectacle of a khedda, a historic method employed in the forested regions of India for capturing wild elephants. Spectators and mahouts gather in tense anticipation along the sturdy wooden palisades, watching the majestic animals enclosed within the stockade. This traditional practice reflects a profound, yet complex, historical relationship between humans and pachyderms in the subcontinent, where mastery over the wilderness was displayed as both a royal duty and a grand colonial spectacle.
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