#Untrendy Topics: Modern Hindi Poetry

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I’ve been doing some research on Indian writers from the 1930s-1960s for a long-term scholarly project, and in the process I’ve been learning a bit about Hindi and Urdu writers I didn’t know about earlier. In Hindi in particular, I’ve been interested in the “New Poetry” (Nayi Kavita) Movement, with a small group of experimental writers adapting the western, free verse style to Hindi. (I may talk about some other topics later in the summer if there is interest.)

For a little background on Hindi literature in the 20th century, you might start with Wikipedia; it’s not bad. The New Poetry movement came out of a general flowering of Hindi poetry from the early 20th century, a style of poetry known as Chhayavad (Shadowism). Mahadevi Verma is one of the best known writers in this style; another notable figure is Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan’s father (and actually quite a good poet).

For me, the Chhayavad poetry sounds a little too pretty (“precious,” as they say in Creative Writing class), though I must admit that part of the problem is that I simply don’t have the Hindi vocabulary to be able to keep up with the language the Chhayavad poets tend to use. I prefer what came after, especially the New Poetry movement. The “New Poetry” style roughly resembles the modernism of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Hilda Doolittle in English literature. The language is stripped down and conversational, rather than lyrical. Some poets, like Kedarnath Singh, focus intently on conveying, with a kind of crystalline minimalism, pure images. Others are somewhat more conventional.

Below the fold, I’ll give some examples of a few favorite poems from the “New Poetry” movement, with several poems in both transliterated Hindi and English. [UPDATE: Look in the comments for three poems directly in Devanagari] My source today is mainly Lucy Rosenstein’s “New Poetry in Hindi”, which is available on Amazon for interested readers. (The nice thing about this volume is Rosenstein’s choice to print both the Hindi originals as well as her translations.)

In her introduction, Rosenstein describes how modern poetry in Hindi emerged after 1900, with Mahavirprasad Dwiwedi’s promotion of poetry in Khari Boli Hindi (earlier, poetry had mainly been written in Braj Bhasha). There was an early spurt of nationalist poetry, but, partially under the influence of English Romantic poetry (Wordsworth and Shelley), a movement calling itself “Chhayavad” emerged in the 1920s. Here is an example of a few lines in the Chhayavad style, from Sumitranandan Pant’s Almore ka vasant (Almora Spring):

Vidrum ou, markat kee chhaya,
Sone chaandee ka sooryatap;
Him parisal kee reshmee vaayu,
Shat ratnachhay kharg chitrit nabh!

Coral and emerald shade
sun’s heat first gold then silver;
snow mountain scent on silken breezes,
a hundred jeweled brids painting the sky
(Translated David Rubin)



It may be that my own limited Hindi renders poems like this somewhat inaccessible, at least in the original. More generally, operating from the translation, I put poems like this under “sounds pretty, but…” (That’s my personal taste. I have friends who love writers like Pant and Mahadevi.)

After the Chhayavad movement, the dominant stream in Hindi poetry seemed to split into two in the 1930s, with Progressives in one camp (Pragativad), and Experimentalists in the other (Prayogvad).

Progressive Poetry was part of a major movement in Indian literature that began in the 1930s. This movement is usually called the Progressive Writers Movement, and it had major literary communities in fiction, drama, as well as poetry; it also had offshoots in many different South Asian languages (earlier I have written about some Urdu writers loosely affiliated with the Progressive Writers, Sa’adat Hasan Manto, and Ismat Chughtai). As the name indicates, this was writing largely motivated by a desire to make a political intervention. A fair amount of the writing was anti-colonial, and much of it was oriented to social and economic reforms within Indian society.

Just after the Progressive trend in poetry began in the 1930s, a much smaller group of Hindi writers initiated a new, experimentalist style. Much of this writing avoided big political themes in favor of more abstract meditations. (Importantly, many of the writers in this movement overlapped with the Progressive Writers, and some were card-carrying political activists (i.e., communists). They simply didn’t bring themes from the political world into their writing.

Initially the movement was spearheaded by Agyeya (also sometimes spelled Ajneya in English; his real name was Sacchidananda Hirananda Vatsayan), beginning with an anthology called Tar Saptak, in 1943.

Agyeya (whose pen-name literally means “Unknowable”) is a really interesting character. He was educated at home initially, as his father didn’t believe in formal schooling, though he did go on to get a Bachelors of Science at a British college. He also started an M.A. in English, but didn’t finish, after he got involved in the independence movement. According to Rosenstein, Agyeya spent three years in jail (1931-1934), which proved decisive in terms of his development as a poet. He was a mass of contradictions – widely recognized as an activist and political leader, Agyeya was also deeply solitary in some ways. Raised as a traditional Brahmin, he also exemplified modernism in his intellectual and literary output.

Here is an example of Agyeya’s poetry, in the Experimental (“New Poetry”) style:

Chup-Chap

Chup-Chap Chup-Chap
Jharne ka svar
Ham mei bhar jay,
Chup Chap Chup Chap
Sharad kee chaandnee
Jheel kee lahro par tir aay,

Chup-chap chup-chap
Jeevan kaa rahsya
Jo kahaa na jay, hamaaree
THahree aankho me gaharaay,
Chup chap chup chap
Ham pulkit viraad me Dubei
Par viraad hm mei mil jay

Chup Chap Chup Cha … ap

Quietly

Quietly
May the murmur of water falling
Fill us,

Quietly
May the autumn moon
Float on the ripples of the lake,

Quietly
May life’s unspoken mystery
Deepen in our still eyes,

Quietly
May we, ecstatic, be immersed in the expanse
Yet find it in ourselves

Quiet … ly …
(translated by Lucy Rosenstein)



Another favorite New Poetry writer is Raghuvir Sahay, who came of age a generation after Agyeya.

Here is an example of a Raghuvir Sahay poem I really like:

Aaj Phir

Aaj phir shuroo jeevan.
Aaj meine eik chhoTee-see saral-see kavitaa paDee.
Aaj meine sooraj ko Dubte der tak dekhaa.
Aaj meine sheetal jal se jee bhar snan kiya.
Aaj eik chhoTee-see bachchee aayee, kilak mere kanDhe chaDee
Aaj meine aadi se ant tak eik poora gaan kiya.
Aaj jeevan phir shuroo huaa.

Today Anew
Today life started anew.
Today I read a short, simple poem.
Today I watched the sun set for a long time.
Today I bathed to my heart’s content in cool water.
Today a little girl came and shouting with delight climbed onto my shoulders.
Today I sang a whole song, from beginning to end.
Life started anew today.
(Translated Lucy Rosenstein)



Another poem in Rosenstein’s collection that clicked with me is by Shakunt Mathur, one of the leading female lights of the Experimental/New Poetry movement.

For now, I’ll just post Rosenstein’s English translation of a Mathur poem:

You should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful

When I return home tired you should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful
Even if all day sweat poured
However many clothes you sewed
Even if the child doesn’t yield
And the potato is half-unpeeled

When I return home tired you should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful
All storms in the house should be stilled
You should look at me with eyes filled
Without flowers in your hair,
Showy clothes, flirtatious air

When I return home tired you should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful
Reclining on the sofa,
You should be reading a foreign journal
The house should shine like crystal
My steps’ sound should startle you

Don’t write poetry, beauty, I am enough, you are loved
When I return home tired you should be beautiful, the house should be beautiful.



(I can post the Hindi if there is interest.)

Clearly a feminist sensibility! Incidentally, in Hindi some of the lines rhyme, which Rosenstein reproduces in her translation. The language is simple but elegant and the picture she’s painting seems true – and this combination is what I like most about the “New Poetry.”

Finally, here is Vinay Dharwadker’s translation of Kedarnath Singh’s “On Reading a Love Poem”. This poem isn’t included in Rosenstein’s volume, though several other wonderful Kedarnath Singh poems are in her collection.

Kedarnath Singh (b. 1934): ON READING A LOVE POEM

When I’d read that long love poem
I closed the book and asked —
Where are the ducks?

I was surprised that they were nowhere
even far into the distance

It was in the third line of the poem
or perhaps the fifth
that I first felt
there might be ducks here somewhere

I’d heard the flap flap of their wings
but that may have been my illusion

I don’t know for how long
that woman
had been standing in the twelfth line
waiting for a bus

The poem was completely silent
about where she wanted to go
only a little sunshine
sifted from the seventeenth floor
was falling on her shoulders

The woman was happy
at least there was nothing in her face to suggest
that by the time she reached the twenty-first line
she’d disappear completely
like every other woman

There were _sakhu trees
standing where the next line began
the trees were spreading
a strange dread through the poem

Every line that came next
was a deep disturbing fear and doubt
about every subsequent line
If only I’d remembered–
it was in the nineteenth line
that the woman was slicing potatoes
She was slicing
large round brown potatoes
inside the poem
and the poem was becoming
more and more silent
more solid

I think it was the smell
of freshly chopped vegetables
that kept the woman alive
for the next several lines

By the time I got to the twenty-second line
I felt that the poem was changing its location
like a speeding bullet
the poem had whizzed over the woman’s shoulder
towards the sakhu trees

There were no lines after that
there were no more words in the poem
there was only the woman
there were only
her shoulders her back
her voice–
there was only the woman
standing whole outside the poem now
and breaking it to pieces

(translated by Vinay Dharwadker) [SOURCE]

I hope you enjoyed at least some of those poems.

82 thoughts on “#Untrendy Topics: Modern Hindi Poetry”

  1. I absolutely adored the last poem. Is there any way I could get my hands on/you could provide Devanagari versions of the poems? I actually find it easier to read Hindi in the script, surprisingly. Also, are there any poems archived online?

  2. If I can figure out how to do Unicode in Hindi, I’ll take a shot at it in comments later today. I can completely understand preferring the Devanagari; my transliterations are quick and dirty (retroflex –> capitalized letters, etc).

    I’m not sure if this stuff is online, though you can use Books.google.com to see bits and pieces from Rosenstein’s collection (“New Poetry in Hindi”). Unfortunately, Books.Google does not render Devanagari correctly…

    BTW, I agree with you on the Kedarnath Singh poem. It’s one of my favorites. Another great one is “Come” (Aana).

  3. WOW!! nice post. ह्रितंत्रिया झंकृत हो गयीं

    Chayawaad, pragatiwaad, prayogwaad — I am reading this after a gap of sooo many years.

    Not a poet but check out works by “Bhadant Anand Kausalyan” – really nice.

  4. It may be that my own limited Hindi renders poems like this somewhat inaccessible, at least in the original.

    The language used in this poem seems particularly ‘unchi’ and, therefore, would be inaccessible to even people who speak (colloquial) Hindi fluently. By contrast, the other poets you included, and e.g. Harivansh Rai Bachchan, use Hindi that, while still literary, can still be understood (and appreciated!) by the larger Hindi-speaking audience.

    Great post, Amardeep! I hope we get to hear about the project once it is complete.

  6. If I can figure out how to do Unicode in Hindi, I’ll take a shot at it in comments later today.

    You can type it out in gmail and then copy & paste it here.

  8. All the Hindi I have studied ended at the 10th grade in India. In my class (I grew up and lived in Chennai before I came here to the US) I did the poorest at my exams but spoke, by far the best Hindi – the class topper could barely form a sentence but his essays in Hindi? Quite something else! Dharamvir Bharati (Mein ek toota pahiya…) Dinkar and many others I read, and I wish I had paid more attention to them. Years later as I learned more about modern Indian literature (in Tamizh and to a lesser extent in Hindi) all my regard for the trends and fads in India disappeared. Today I believe that no serious discussion of modern Indian writing can be done that ignores the literary output of our movies, and any course in poetry, especially, must begin with a tour of Ludhianvi, Jaipuri, Bakshi, Shailendra, Sultanpuri, and many others in Hindi/Urdu, Kannadasan in Tamizh, Sri Sri in Telugu and many others. Yet others such as Kaifi Azmi and Jan Nissar Akhtar saw no division at all between low brow and high brow art. Although every playwright, song writer and script writer is a poet or writer at heart, those who have worked for Indian movies have been have been that and beyond, being writers and commentators of distinction. For instance among the Telugu movie lyricists, Sri Sri was a labor activist and Aarudra edited a literary magazine and wrote histories. Kannadasan’s songs evoke themes from the Tamizh classics. He wrote over 200 books including a 10-volume commentary on Hinduism. Bhupen Hazarika is a literary giant. What probably explains the popularity of high brow poetry is that it is heard more than read. And it is heard repeatedly at home, at work, on the streets. Take Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa – the same trio Burman, Ludhianvi and Rafi gave us “Sar jo tera takraye” and “Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai” in the same movie! So the Pyaasa junkie (I am getting there) effortlessly shifts from levity to renunciation. Some of us know every line of the poems, some of us remember them only when we hear them (like me).

  10. Thanks for the Transliterate.Google tip, guys. I had been putzing around with fonts at the University of Chicago’s website, and it wasn’t getting me anywhere…

    Ok, here’s one poem (Raghuvir Sahay) for starters.

    आज फिर

    आज फिर शुरू हुआ जीवन. आज मैंने यिक छोटी-सी सरल-सी कविता पढी. आज मैंने सूरज को डूबता देर तक देखा. आज मैंने शीतल जल से जी भर स्नान किया. आज यिक छोटी-सी बच्ची आयी, किलक मेरे कन्धे चढी. आज मैंने आदि से अन्त तक यिक पूरा गान किया. आज जीवन फिर शुरू हुआ.

  11. Nice! As a lit nerd and former English major, I say keep these kind of posts coming.

    Since poetry is usually best appreciated when read out loud, I’m going to make my husband read these to me…;-)

  12. And here is Agyeya’s “Chup-chaap”. The one thing I couldn’t figure out is how to do a character at the end (he breaks up the word “chaap” into fragments at the end of the poem)

    चुप-चाप

    चुप-चाप चुप चाप झरने का स्वर हम में भर जाय

    चुप-चाप चुप-चाप शरद की चांदनी झील की लहरों पर तीर आय,

    चुप-चाप चुप-चाप जीवन का रहस्य जो कहा न जाय, हमारी ठहरी आँखों में गहराय,

    चुप-चाप चुप-चाप हम पुलकित विराट में दुबे पर विराट हम में मिल जाय —

    चुप चाप चुप च [??] प

  13. There is also a case to abandon the current approach to the study modern Indian literature that isolates the literature of each language. This ignores the fact that several poets of their day were engaged with many languages, fields of study and geographies. In the South, Telugu and Tamizh (and some Malayalam writers too) writers worked together in Chennai (both Sri Sri and Arudhra spent many years there). Kannada writers moved between Maharashtra and N. Karnataka (Bendre was Marathi). Calcutta was a melting pot of sorts for N, S, E, and W.

  14. There is also a case to abandon the current approach to the study modern Indian literature that isolates the literature of each language.

    That is one of the premises of the project I’ve embarked on — I’m trying to look at the period with a few different North Indian languages in mind (I am unfortunately limited to the ones whose scripts I know how to read — Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, English). I’m also going to be looking at literary critics who have studied S. Indian writers & incorporate their insights & terminology on trust.

    I like your point about the great poetry in the film songs of the 1950s… A lot of people involved in the PWA worked with people like Bimal Roy… Though I have to admit I haven’t studied this much yet. (Incidentally, if you’re interested in this stuff, you should read Tabish Khair’s novel “Filming,” which is about Sa’adat Hasan Manto & early Bombay cinema).

  15. Great post, Amardeep, thanks so much. I didn’t know any of those things. The Rosenstein book sounds really useful! I don’t do well with transliteration schemes that aren’t the one I grew up with, and can’t read devnagari—anyone want to record audio of themselves reading some of these poems and post it in the comments?

  16. Ok, last one. Shakunt Mathur.

    तुम सुन्दर हो, घर सुन्दर हो

    जब में थका हुआ घर आओं, तुम सुन्दर हो घर सुन्दर हो चाहे दिन भर बहे पसीने कितने भी हो कपडे सीने बच्चा भी रोता हो गीला आलू भे हो आधा छीला

    जब में थका हुआ घर आओं, तुम सुन्दर हो घर सुन्दर हो सब तूफान रुके हो घर के मुझको देखो आँखों भर के न जुड़े मेंइ फूल सजाई न तितली से वासन, न नखरे

    जब में थका हुआ घर आओं, तुम सुन्दर हो घर सुन्दर हो अधलेटी हो तुम सोफे पर फारिं मैगजीन पढ़ती हो शीशे सा घर साफ पड़ा हो आहत पर छोंकी पड़ती हो

    तुम कविता तुम लिखो सलौनी, में काफी हूँ, तुम प्रियतर हो जब में थका हुआ घर आओं, तुम सुन्दर हो घर सुन्दर हो

  18. This is such a lovely post. Thank you! And Jyotsana, really enjoyed your thoughtful comment on the link between film and literature in India. There are clearly some very erudite commentors on this site–wish there were more posts where dilettantes like moi could read their thoughts on the humanities…

  19. A mention of modern Hindi poetry and one where Harivanshrai Bacchan is mentioned should absolutely mention Madhushala. Its one of the those poems that every time you listen to/read it, you tend to discover new layers of meaning. Manna Dey has an album setting parts of the poem to beuatiful music, for those who are interested.

    http://www.manaskriti.com/kaavyaalaya/mdhshla.stm

  20. Thanks for reminding us of our legacies, Amardeep. These poems are realistic without the Indian exotic tinge of new fad lit–at least they’re not mentioning mangoes but merely peeling potates.

  21. Amardeep,

    You would be blazing a new path by approaching the literature of India as the expression of the interaction between people from different communities rather than a particular language or region. This would be a first. I am also leery about the classification of Indian art forms into classical and folk traditions, but know very little to reject it outright.

    Jawad Naqvi, The Dawn’s Delhi correspondent writes,

    URDU and Hindi have been the most disruptive languages for South Asia. Urdu, for completely spurious reasons, was declared the national language of Pakistan. Hindi was wrongly but aggressively foisted as the main language of a Unitarian Indian state. The conception of Urdu as a linguistic attribute of South Asian Muslims — the reason for its embrace by Pakistan — would be laughable had it not led to a tragic denouement for the country. The creation of Bangladesh questioned the axiom. Several linguistic groups within Pakistan and many more Muslim clusters in India mock the primacy accorded to Urdu because of a communally enforced error. Likewise, none except a section of the mostly upper caste elite in India speaks Hindi. They condescend to assert that Maithili, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Brajbhasha, etc are dialects of Hindi…The late K.R. Malkani, another rightwing ideologue from Sindh, believed in the waning ideology of Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan. He asked me to write an Urdu verse, which he liked and wanted to publish in his party organ. I scribbled the lines in Devnaagri, the common script for Hindi, which he confessed he couldn’t read. So I dictated the verse in Urdu for an ardent advocate of Hindi!

    Shakeel Badayuni’s Baiju Bawra poems make one sit up and wonder if he was indeed giving voice to what he heard on the streets and in the kitchen growing up – the earthy simple Brij Bhasha inspired verses. I remember an interview on TV years ago in India where (Majrooh Sultanpuri or was it Hasrat Jaipuri) was talking about how they worked very hard for one particular movie to avoid the high flown elite Persianised Urdu and tried to flow with the simpler and more robust Awadhi/Bhojpuri idiom. IPTA and PWA were both chock a bloc with writers who effortlessly moved between the worlds of literature and drama and popular film. How many of us know of the many years Kamleshwar and Ismat Chugtai (supposedly from the “different” worlds of Hindi and Urdu) worked with each other?

    We can’t turn back the clock, but if I could I would like to be able to break up state lines in India at least for writers. I will make sure to check out the book on Manto, who remains the master of the two line irony punch, who makes Hemingway look wordy. Muka don’t make me blush, though it feels great to be appreciated! I am lucky to know a little Tamizh, because it opens up a window both ways, to look in and look out from within a very non-Sanskritic language at other languages which has nonetheless used Sanskrit loan words for millennia. The little I know enthralls me, I wonder how much more delightful it would e for a person like Sanjay Subrahmanayam who knows quite a few Indian languages – including Tamizh

    Amardeep all ht ebest for your project. I hope you break down these silos. Keep us posted.

  23. Prof. Amardeep: Congratulations. Nice post. I know you probably can’t read and comprehend Gujarati, but some of the best poetry in Gujarati starting from Narsinh Mehta thru Avinash Vyas, Umshanker Joshi, Jhaverchand Meghani, to modern day poetry by Harindra Dave, Tushar Shukla and Suresh Dalal are equally good – if not better. Some day – very soon I hope – when I retire I willmake an attempt to bring it to SM. Keep on the great work.

  24. Kiligal,

    I am a Tamizhan and am so happy that I have a nodding acquaintance with quite a few languages of India., and have a hard time deciding which one delights me the most. I am polyamorous about the languages of India and am delighted about it.

  25. Kiligai:

    Tamil is a far more poetic and ancient language than Hindi.

    It is certainly more ancient. But poetic? How do people judge these things. Poetry comes from the thoughts of the poet.

    Jyotsana, the movies claim our poets because they have to eat and they have to be heard in equal measure. It is a powerful medium.

    Amardeep: Thanks for the Devanagri renditions. I’ve been reading Premchand online (not poetry but in Devanagri). Here is the link if others are interested: http://munshi-premchand.blogspot.com/

  27. I am polyamorous about the languages of India and am delighted about it.

    Hilarious. 🙂

    Is there mash-up Indian poetry? Not just a ‘native’ desi language and English, but at least three languages? I recall a song Dil Se that was both Hindi/Urdu lyrics and lyrics in a South Indian language. I wanted to visti Bollywhat to go check, but Chrome tells me it has malware. :*(. It would be kind of cool to really mash it up though–have rhymes that mixed up languages in some sort of patterned, metrical way.

  30. my_dog_jagat,

    It is not as if our writers in a flash of inspiration decided to make money rather than starve. The film industry offers no assurance of income, and is if anything even more difficult to break into than the world of letters. Rather our writers seem to have been moved by the opportunity a mass medium like cinema offers in India where the word heard reaches further and more than the word read. And also cinema in India has always been moved by progressive ideals. Prithviraj Kapoor loved the stage and continued to act on it well into his movie career. Raj Kapoor was known to spend his time talking to the fisherfolk and mathadi kaamgars to understand their life – watch Bootpolish to get the idea. Kannadasan wasvery active in the Dravidian movement before he found religion and became a “born again Hindu” when he read the Andal Thiruppavai. Ilayaraja toured with his brother the late socialist balladeer Pavalar Varadarajan for years before he started to tour with SPB. Take the late great Akshay Mohanty of Odisha, who would be stopped on the roadside and asked to deliver an impromptu performance of his latest compositions. We also should not forget the impact of Gandhi, who moved many of these creative geniuses to abandon class for mass. So mushaira, IPTA performances, and PWA sessions and movies all went together. Saeed Ali Jafri is said to have panned the mushaira for its decadence, since it was more concerned with the hand that held the jaam, than the hand that works and feeds!

  31. jyotsana, in fact Hindi and Urdu are the same language, the only distiunction is the arabic-Persion words in Urdu, which alo mixes Punjabi. If you look at BBC website, you will find that the Urdu-Hindi programmes are the one, which is irrational, unless the languages are indeed virtually the same..I agree that hardly a third of India actually speaks the Official Hindi language, and that the Bollywood version is hardly Hindi, more Hindustani ( a mix of Urdu, Modern Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali and Gujrati), despite the fact Mumbhai actually is Marathi speaking..sorry going off topic

  32. वारस शाह वारस शाह हुन कौन तेरे

    पन्ने पत्ते फरोलदा है?

    आले दुआले हर पंजाबी

    ज਼ुबान फरंग दी बोलदा है

    आपने आप तों लोकी

    होयी जांदे ने दूर

    पछमीं हवा खाके

    चड़्हआ फरंगी सरूर

    तेरे किस्से तेरियां मत्तां

    कित्थे अजकल्ल्ह पछाणदे ने

    ख਼ुद नूं ए पंजाबी कहाउण

    पर बाहरले गीत ही जाणदे ने

    विदेशी पंजाबी पूरभ वल्ल

    बड़े अफ਼सोस नौल तकदे ने

    क्युं कि केवल इही विदेशी

    विरसे दा ख਼्याल रखदे ने

    तुसीं दस्सो कित्थे वसदे

    सच्चे सुच्चे पंजाबी?

    मैं तां वेख्या विच्च पंजाब

    हर गभरू अमली शराबी

    अवार्यो बेवकूफ਼ो !

    खोल’ती आपनी तजोरी

    प्यार्यो मा दे जायओ

    करा’ती घर दी चोरी

    वापस आखे गल्ल सुन रूप

    मेरे पन्ने फरोलदे ने!

    मैं तां वेख्या कनेडा इंगलैंड

    मेरी ही बोली बोलदे ने

    रूप ढिल्लों

    The above is the best translation I could do of Roop Dhillon, the only writer hailing from the west who writes in Indian languages..Enjoy

  33. Rather our writers seem to have been moved by the opportunity a mass medium like cinema offers in India where the word heard reaches further and more than the word read.

    Dear Jyotsana, I think I said the same thing but with greater economy.

  34. This is an excellant modern poem by Afsaal Sahir

    सज्जन जी! पीड़ां विकने आईआं किसे ना हस्स करायी बोहनी किसे ना झोळी पाईआं

    सज्जन जी! पीड़ां विकने आईआं

    उमरों लंमे आस दे पैंडे असीं विच्चों दी होए पब्बां हेठां चीकन साहवां सुफ़ने वी अधमोए

    जुस्से अत्त परैणां वज्जियां किसे ना मल्हमां लाईआं

    सज्जन जी! पीड़ां विकने आईआं

    निज्ज समें ने हर म्हातड़ दी बुल्हड़ी उक्खड़ी सीती उहदी पीड़ वंडाउन दी थां होर वधेरी कीती

    उह वी मगरों लाह के टुर गए जिन्हां दित्तियां साईआं पीड़ां विकने आईआं

    सज्जन जी! पीड़ां विकने आईआं

    सावियां रुत्तां वरगे सुफ़ने चीकां दे विच गुन्न्हे शहर ने जिवें पक्क्यां थांवां पिंडां दे पिंड सुन्ने

    लाशां ते दफ़नाउंदे सुण्या रूहां किस दफ़नाईआं? सज्जन जी! पीड़ां विकने आईआं अफ़ज़ल साहर

    And a wonderful one by Roop Dhillon

    हुन क्युं रोंदे परवासीयो? – रूप ढिल्लों जद उड्डके आए बाहर कुझ्झ ना कुझ्झ होया वार

    पंज पानी करदे याद दुक्खदा उड्डन तों बाअद

    पिंजर तुसीं ही छड्ड्या इथे आके झंडा गड्डि‌आ

    अणजान हो ग्या देस उपरा हाले विदेस

    अक्खां अग्गे अंग्रेज਼ बण गए न्याने खाक विच गुआच गए पंजाब दे स्याने

    आखदा “रूप” हुन क्युं रोंदे परवासीयो?

  37. Thank goodness for untrendy topics! I loved it. Thanks for taking the trouble to give us the Devanagri versions. There were subtle differences in the original “Tum Sundar Ho, Ghar Sundar Ho” which made all the difference. If you have dealt with a “geela rota bachcha” you know what I mean. Brilliant stuff.

    It reminded me that the primary reason I want to learn Spanish is to read Neruda untranslated. I too am polyamorous when it comes to poetry!

  38. Saheli: Is there mash-up Indian poetry? Not just a ‘native’ desi language and English, but at least three languages?

    Your comment reminded me of this stupid song from a recent Telugu movie ‘Love Chesthe’. It has a lot of Telugu and Hindi words and a little bit of English. Enjoy

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj60hnR4khQ

  39. Great post, Amardeep! I’m excited to learn about new writers that I had not encountered before.

    One comment though, how can you talk about the Progressive Writers Movement and not mention Faiz Ahmed Faiz?

  41. Just registering my approval for untrendy topics, and this lovely post in particular! Thanks Amardeep!

    I am curious as to the history of if/ how the persian poetry tradition influenced (and vice versa?) the development of hindi/urdu poetry, in more modern times. I’m sure literary minded folks were certainly aware of Rumi etc. in Moghul times, but I do wonder if there was any cross-pollination in more recent times.

  42. @jackal, the entire genre of the Ghazal came to Urdu poetry through Persian poetry. Greats such as Ghalib were influenced by Persian poets like Bedil. I’m sure there are more examples, I’m just not thinking of right now.

  43. Amardeep,

    Thank you very much for this post.

    Re: comments about the work of poets who write songs for movies — I have long thought that there is a great essay to be written comparing the discourse of sonnets in 16th century England and the idiom repertoire of Hindi movie love songs from the 1950’s-1970’s. (My knowledge of Hindi movie songs after the early ’80 falls off a cliff — immigration will do that to you.) Though the audience for sonnets in 16th cent England was obviously tiny compared to the wide dissemination of Hindi movie songs, both sonnets and Hindi movie songs deploy a certain repertoire of images and ideas, and assume a certain attitude toward the erotic experience — the ardent wooer, the rejected/dejected lover, the unavailable beauty etc.

  45. Amardeep, just for information’s sake, how do you work in this field without fluency in the languages you wish to study? Do you work mainly with translations?

  46. @Jackal – 41

    I don’t remember other discussions of influence Persian/Arab influence on Hindi/Urdu poetry, but quite distinctly remember my 10th grade teacher telling us that Bacchan’s Madhushala (Madhubala and Madhu Kalash were the other works in the trilogy) was inspired by Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyyat. Some parts of Madhushala used to make me tear up, because of the profound metaphysical implications of the words. Wikipedia’s entry on Madhushala lists Bacchan Sr. as having translated the Rubaiyyat into Hindi.

    Regarding Bollywood and poetry – Gulzar still carries the torch of poetry with his lyrics in many movies (Dil Se, Maachis come to mind). If you take away the gyrations of Malaika Arora and A R Rehman’s musical over-the-topness from Chhaiya Chhaiya and just listen to the words, there’s poetry right there.

  47. Amardeep,

    Thanks so much for sharing, I found the last two poems very interesting as well! I hope you share more on this topic. I know very little about Hindi poetry but would love to read more.

    I also wanted to let you (and anyone else interested) know that there is a very useful (and free) program to type many different Indian scripts in unicode anywhere you want. The program is called Baraha (www.baraha.com/) and I have been using it for quite a few years now, and find it very easy to use. One of the programs contained in it is Baraha Direct which just puts a little icon in your menu… you can pick which Indian language you want to type in, and then press F11 (I believe) to switch between that language and English as you type. It is also easy to switch between multiple languages if you need to. 🙂

  48. Amardeep, just for information’s sake, how do you work in this field without fluency in the languages you wish to study? Do you work mainly with translations?

    I have limited but serviceable Hindustani; I’m able to read Premchand with a dictionary. Poetry is harder (and actually I’m not working on poetry in depth in the project — my real interest is in the fiction output of the PWA and the “Nayi Kahani/Naya Afsana”).

    Needless to say: this project goes hand in hand with regular language practice and continuous learning.

    Also, a big dose of humility, caution, and help from friends.

    As the Japanese say: Kaizen.

  50. @Amardeep

    Bachchan Sr. isn’t considered one of the chhayawaadis… some critics called his work ‘halawaad’ but that is not a movement. Good post.