1 verses · ~1 min
आज़ादी का दिन मना, नई ग़ुलामी बीच; सूखी धरती, सूना अंबर, मन-आंगन में कीच; मन-आंगम में कीच, कमल सारे मुरझाए; एक-एक कर बुझे दीप, अंधियारे छाए; कह क़ैदी कबिराय न अपना छोटा जी कर; चीर निशा का वक्ष पुनः चमकेगा दिनकर।
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
Hanuman Bound in the Court of Ravana
This profound moment from the Sundara Kanda of the Ramayana captures the indomitable spirit of Shri Hanuman standing tall within the opulent and menacing court of the demon king Ravana. Having lovingly delivered the message of Lord Rama and exposed the vanity of Lanka, Hanuman allows himself to be bound by the celestial Brahmastra to converse with the king of demons. Yet, even wrapped in bonds, his radiant form overflows with divine power, humility, and unwavering devotion. The courtiers pull with all their mortal might, oblivious to the reality that true strength cannot be tied down by ropes, but only surrendered through love.
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