Dear Bob,
News came in the afternoon that Vinod Kumar Shukla passed after a brief illness. Pneumonia and complications. He was 89 and was writing stories and poems to the end. I'd admired him ever since I came across the first line of one of his early poems. It began "That man put on a new woolen coat and went away like a thought." A new woolen coat is not something you would see Shukla in. It would probably be a coat neither old nor new; it would be too nondescript to be either. He was nondescript looking himself. He would give long interviews but without, I think, saying very much. He never commented on other writers. Never did reviews. Had none of the trappings of the "literary" life. For a living he taught agricultural extension in a remote city in central India. It was in the country's tribal belt and he saw the destruction of the forest first hand. In one poem he spoke of people from the villages leaving their homes and coming to the city. He watched men, women, children passing him in the street. Then one year he saw men and women -- but few children. Was the tribe dying out?
Love
~ Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
