खाली समय में

The poem establishes a mundane, sluggish, and humorously exasperated emotional atmosphere saturated with the absurdities of absolute idleness. Visually, a painting of this scene would depict a disheveled figure shifting restlessly across a sunlit and shaded courtyard, surrounded by buzzing flies, a curious puppy, and crumpled newspapers whileabsentmindedly doodling grotesque faces on blank paper and drawing mustaches on magazine portraits. The underlying satire and symbolism mock the modern illusion of rest, transforming petty, meaningless chores—like swatting flies with curses and delivering grand speeches to stray crows—into an exhausting performance of boredom. The overall artistic tone is playfully sardonic and irreverent, capturing the comical irony that true relaxation is perpetually out of reach even when one has nothing to do.

खाली समय में (Khali Samay Mein), by Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena runs to 32 lines, set as Continuous rhyming couplets in free-flowing verse. Its governing rasa is Hasya, shaded by Shanta. The metre is mukt chhand. Rhyme falls as AABBCCDD.

It belongs to the 1927 · 1983 span of Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena's working life, and keeps the plain, spoken register that period is known for.

Read it for खाली समय की अजीबोगरीब गतिविधियाँ, मध्यमवर्गीय जीवन की बोरियत और अकेलापन and व्यर्थ के कामों में व्यस्त रहने की मानवीय प्रवृत्ति. 3 words in it carry older or regional senses, so the poem rewards a second pass.

The verse is hung beside Game of Pachisi: Bathed in a warm, inviting atmosphere of quiet camaraderie and intense mental absorption, four men in traditional attire and turbans sit together on the floor, deeply engrossed in a strategic match of the ancient board…