‘A street in the bazaar’
A street in the bazaar,
A busy shopper,
Carrying a soiled
Slightly torn bag
In each hand,
One empty, one full.
Inside it, potatoes, leafy
Vegetables, a small packet
Of garam masala, and chillies,
Red or green.
How I wish I could’ve been
A ten-rupee note
And found shelter
In his bag.
But I was holed up
Inside my own.
(1960)
‘My numb arms are’
My numb arms are
Parallel with the tree’s
Dry branches
And my eyes fixed
On a leaf bud.
When it rains,
I want the eyes
To be wet first,
And after that,
In my arms’ greenery,
A bird to make
Its nest,
Lay eggs.
(1960)
‘A small room’
A small room
With nails in the walls
To hang pictures from.
But there’s not one
Picture to be seen.
Wherever the hand
Can reach easily,
Clothes hang
Neatly from the nails,
To be worn again
A few more times.
‘I toss a bunch of keys’
I toss a bunch of keys
In the air,
And the sky opens.
Perhaps the key
Of my strongbox
Fitted it.
High up
In the clear sky
I see five fighter jets appear
And disappear,
And inside the strongbox
One or two cockroaches
That refuse to come out
Even when the box is
Held upside down.
(1965)
Vinod Kumar Shukla (b.1937) is a modern Hindi poet, novelist and short-story writer. His works include the novels Naukar ki Kameez (which has been made into a film by Mani Kaul) and Deewar Mein Ek Khirkee Rahati Thi (A Window Lived in a Wall), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999. He lives in Raipur, Chhattisgarh.
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra lives in Dehra Dun, in the foothills of the Himalayas. He is the author of seven previous books of poetry and two collections of essays. He is also the translator of Songs of Kabir and the editor of Collected Poems in English by Arun Kolatkar and The Book of Indian Essays: Two Hundred Years of English Prose. His Collected Poems is coming out from Shearsman Books in 2022.