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REMEMBERING VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA ~

 

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

VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA ~

 

A city person,

I was strangely disoriented

in the midst of nature.

In the bus queue

it looked as though

a roadside tree

had come and joined in too.

I was right behind it,

the last in line.

Now I'm an educated man.

When the bus arrived

I waited for the tree to get on first

when it struck me that trees

do not board buses.

And I who am a city dweller,

was separated from nature

in such a way that leaving the tree behind

I took my seat on the bus.

Once seated, my only wish

was to see trees on either side of the road

all the way back.

In my room I've hung a picture

of a whole forest.  

                                   (1976)

A dry river

was dry again the following year.

Deep below,

it would've been drier.

Below dry rivers

are channels of more dry rivers.

In a village

along one such river

its oldest man,

the last one alive,

will eventually find

buried in the sediment

a transparent rock

in which are fossils

of river vegetation,

river fish,

organisms, and snails,

and also locked inside,

one drop of water

millions of years old.

Preserved in the soul of the oldest man

is a single seed of rice.

I'm at the place

where it was decided I'll be

and from where I've always

been observing

those who go by.

This is where we'll gather,

though come to think of it

we could've gathered

at any place and there's no place

where we couldn't have gathered.

No matter where we meet,

we invariably meet at the place

meant for gathering.

With birth is born its twin, death —

it's a double birth.

Wherever I go, I carry this inborn death with me.

I'll save it

for as long as I live.

But after death, somewhere in the piggy bank,

you'll find that life's been saved.

I walk around as though I were the treasurer of piggy banks,

even of their piggy banks.

The Chhattisgarh to Bilaspur

on which I was traveling

would stop unwontedly.

Suddenly, at Gondia,

everyone disembarked

and rushed towards the Calcutta train

that had arrived.

Getting off, a passenger,

he was older than me, said,

You better get off too,

or you'll be waiting until your next life

for this one to reach its destination.

In no great hurry,

I was happy to be sitting where I was,

I was only going up to Rajnandgaon,

a few stations away,

where I was born.

_________________________

Vinod Kumar Shukla

Treasurer of Piggy Banks

translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

Circumference Books, 2024

VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA NEW! FROM LONGHOUSE ~

 

Vinod Kumar Shukla has won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature for lifetime achievement in literature, one of the most coveted literary prizes worldwide, after decades of composing acclaimed novels like Naukar Ki Kameez (1979) and poetry collections like Sab Kuch Hona Bacha Rahega (1992).

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signed copy by translator

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

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Issued from Longhouse, 2023

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VINOD KUMAR SHUKLA ~

 

‘Were that we all had lived together’

 

Were that we all had lived together

under one roof

without separate kitchens—

grandfather,  great aunt, 

father, uncle, siblings—

and remained in 

the same neighbourhood. 

Grass lives next to grass,

mud next to mud,

and in the wind live 

storms, hurricanes, 

and scent-laden gusts.

Unbroken, without knots,

the earth’s wind is one

with our breathing.  

_________________________

Vinod Kumar Shukla

(with ever thanks to

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

who sent the poem to me 

from India this morning)

M U C H     M O R E !

“College” was first published in English in Blue Is Like Blue (2019), a collection of Vinod Kumar Shukla’s stories translated by Mehrotra and Rai, by HarperCollins India.