13 verses · ~1 min
ठन गई! मौत से ठन गई!
जूझने का मेरा इरादा न था, मोड़ पर मिलेंगे इसका वादा न था,
रास्ता रोक कर वह खड़ी हो गई, यों लगा ज़िन्दगी से बड़ी हो गई।
मौत की उमर क्या है? दो पल भी नहीं, ज़िन्दगी सिलसिला, आज कल की नहीं।
मैं जी भर जिया, मैं मन से मरूँ, लौटकर आऊँगा, कूच से क्यों डरूँ?
तू दबे पाँव, चोरी-छिपे से न आ, सामने वार कर फिर मुझे आज़मा।
मौत से बेख़बर, ज़िन्दगी का सफ़र, शाम हर सुरमई, रात बंसी का स्वर।
बात ऐसी नहीं कि कोई ग़म ही नहीं, दर्द अपने-पराए कुछ कम भी नहीं।
प्यार इतना परायों से मुझको मिला, न अपनों से बाक़ी हैं कोई गिला।
हर चुनौती से दो हाथ मैंने किये, आंधियों में जलाए हैं बुझते दिए।
आज झकझोरता तेज़ तूफ़ान है, नाव भँवरों की बाँहों में मेहमान है।
पार पाने का क़ायम मगर हौसला, देख तेवर तूफ़ाँ का, तेवरी तन गई।
मौत से ठन गई।
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
Kalantaka Shiva Saving Markandeya
This profound oleograph captures the timeless moment when Lord Shiva emerges as Kalantaka, the conqueror of death, to protect his young and devoted worshipper Markandeya from the clutches of Yama, the lord of justice and mortality. Markandeya, blessed with a destined short life of only sixteen years, clings desperately to the sacred Shiva lingam in absolute surrender and faith. As Yama approaches upon his water buffalo and casts his noose to claim the boy's soul, Shiva bursts forth from the stone pillar with righteous fury, wielding his divine trident and damru to vanquish death itself. Through this masterful work, Raja Ravi Varma bridges the gap between divine mythology and human emotion, immortalizing the ultimate triumph of supreme devotion over mortal fear.
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