2 verses · ~1 min
क्षमा करो बापू! तुम हमको, बचन भंग के हम अपराधी, राजघाट को किया अपावन, मंज़िल भूले, यात्रा आधी।
जयप्रकाश जी! रखो भरोसा, टूटे सपनों को जोड़ेंगे। चिताभस्म की चिंगारी से, अन्धकार के गढ़ तोड़ेंगे।
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
Baji Prabhu Deshpande and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj
This painting captures a profound moment of sacrifice and undying loyalty in the history of the Maratha Empire. It depicts Baji Prabhu Deshpande, the valiant commander, standing before his sovereign, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. The setting is the rugged pass of Ghodkhind, which would later be renamed Pavan Khind, or the Pass of the Sacred, in honor of the blood spilled there. Baji Prabhu pledged to hold back the enemy forces to ensure the safe passage of his king, fighting until his very last breath. His stance reflects a lifetime of devotion, while the king gestures toward the path ahead, heavy with the knowledge of the sacrifice his loyal friend was prepared to make. It remains a poignant symbol of the bond between a leader and a devoted servant, echoing through the hills of Maharashtra as an eternal testament to courage.
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