On the passing of Vinod Kumar Shukla.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The year is ending with a profound loss. Writer Vinod Kumar Shukla died on Tuesday at a hospital in Raipur, Chattisgarh, aged 88. Among many readers who felt a personal sense of loss at his passing is a young poet in Delhi. Mukul lives in Mayur Vihar Phase 3. Over an exchange on WhatsApp, he talked of his attachment to the late writer, especially referring to his poem Hatasha Se Ek Vyakti Baith Gaya Tha. He went on gushing respectfully about the departed poet: “The way Shuklji drops profundities in the plain sight of ordinary language. The way his sentences, familiar at first sight, move and bend into so many shapes of meaning. His empathy; he is never heavy-handed with his politics. Gentle, but always firm. So much to learn in that. And then of course, as with all works of true art, there’s something inexplicable, intangible in the way he expresses. Everything he did was poetic.”

Mukul hasn’t written a new poem for a long time. But he was so moved by the writer’s passing, that he immediately sat down to write his feelings into verses. Although Mukul writes poems both in Hindi and English, and Vinod Kumar Shukla always wrote in Hindi, Mukul wrote this poem in English. He agreed to share it with us. (His photo was snapped some weeks ago at the Indian Coffee House).

In the memory of Late Vinod Kumar Shukl

You will remain with the pauses.

When words forget the soft stutter
Of truth’s horror expressed
By a child’s inflexible tongue
Or an aged poet’s fragile outpourings
Your words native as neighbourly
And that dreamer’s magic logic
Will remain in everything
When everything remains.

The homesickness of being home.
That dejection you knew,
That walking together we do.
That dream that lives on a wall
In our small everyday windows.
That hunger we find trapped
In our empty tiffin boxes left
Neglected in the jungles we forget.
You remain.

You remain like the ‘perhaps’
That remains, perhaps, when nothing
Remains after a riot.
Perhaps in between death—a leaf,
A newborn pup, a ball of black wool,
A stubbed beedi—perhaps that young boy
That hides among the trees?
Perhaps a final solitude.
A quivering voice in the night—
He’s no more. There’s no one in the neighbour’s home.