“Kavi Saptak: A Celebration of Poetry and Creativity at Vanmali Srujan Kendra, Bhopal”

Bhopal. Vanmali Srujan Kendra, Bhopal unit organized a special poetry recitation series called ‘Kavi Saptak’ in the Muktdhara Auditorium of Rabindranath Tagore University on 23 December 2024. In which talented poets of Rabindranath Tagore University and Scope Global Skill University mesmerized the audience with their creations.

In this program, Shashwat Verma, Ashi Dixit, Vikrant Bhatt, Vishakha Rajurkar Raj, Mudit Srivastava and Mausami Parihar recited their poems, which immersed the auditorium in literary essence. Shashwat was seen communicating with his inner self in his poems, while the freshness of language was seen in Ashi’s poems. Vikrant presented his curiosities in poetry. Vishakha scattered the rainbow colors of love in her poems. Mudit worked to bind the events of life and the fine lines of nature in language. Mausami expressed her tender restlessness through poems.
The program was presided over by Dr. Veena Sinha ji, President of Vanmali Srujan Kendra, Bhopal unit. Who congratulated the poets and shared her views on their poems. Shri Vinay Upadhyay ji also praised the poets and the new experiments done in their creations. At the end of the program, Dr. Savitri Singh Parihar, Coordinator of Sanskrit Oriental Language and Indian Knowledge Tradition Center, expressed her gratitude to everyone. Student Pushpendra, Chairman of Virasat Samiti, conducted the program efficiently, and on this occasion teachers of the Faculty of Humanities and Liberal Arts and students of Natya Vidyalaya were also present as spectators. Due to which the program got a wide and enthusiastic audience. ‘Kavi Saptak’ not only provided a platform to poetry lovers but also promoted literary dialogue and creativity.




The Pearly Dew Drop Speaks

A few dew drops rests on the primroses with garden greens

It seems like glistening pearls to a few

But the drying drops knows for sure

That they are indeed not the pearly wealthy whites

But only a few drops of glistening moist moments

On the rich laden scented garden

They might be adorned. only come back may another day

If the willingness of fair weather and fade-in garden days permits




We are forever anew

When its time to be heard, prepared to be silent
When its time to be considered, prepared to be hurt
When its time to say how many times more
Be prepared to be reminded your time might never come
In the solace that in your grave site
You will be marked forget or remembered
You will be seen as saint either a saint or a sinner
A fool or a fearless brave
With flowers at your feet or weeds
With no visiting tears or many who will place stones around your bed
To this land we will all go one day
Become the dust where new flowers will grow
Can we be happy only to know
That on our passing by we will
Not be silenced, not be hurt, not be torn apart by inner tears
Its time my friends to see this too
Our saga will be told forever a new




The Hearing of a Home

A Small Cottage near the Greens
With Neighbourly kind voices that were once Seen
Oh has Life Ever Been?
That Standing Stillness of Home?
Not to Move out, Not to Move On
The Standing Sense of Home
It’s the Scent of Home, the Sense of Home
The Sense of Hearing, the Sense of Greens…
That Beckons my Mind to Stay in this Hearth
As within the Steady Hands of a Clock Time Unseen
For I Wish not to Forget…not to move on
Not to move out
For that Sense I Belong to that no one Unseen
Are the Living Beats of time enough for me?
Yes, the Beating Steady time Beats are enough for me
Loud, Strong, Clicking, Sounds
Loud Enough to be Heard Forever by Me…




A Multilingual Recitation by Dr. Karan Singh

Dr. Karan Singh

Poetry is to be Heard 

A review by Mandira Ghosh

READINGS: Sounds of Poetry: 

CHAIR: Muzaffar Ali 

COLLABORATION: The Poetry Society, India 

12 December 2023

The recitations in five languages by Dr. Karan Singh brought alive the linguistic diversity of India. He shared some of his favourite poems in English, Urdu, Hindi, Sanskrit and Dogri, and said that prose is to be read and poetry is to be heard; life without music and poetry is dull. Muzaffar Ali, who chaired this unique session, urged the celebration of poetry and said that all his works, especially his unreleased film Zooni, were driven by poetry. 

Karan Singh began reciting his favoured poems in a mellifluous voice and sonorous tone. He started with   Wordsworth’s famous poem titled ‘Daffodils’, and went on to read more outstanding poems by poets like W. B. Yeats and Robert Frost. While reading Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’, he mentioned that he himself took the road less travelled and that made all the difference in his life. He explained Frost’s famous words: ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep’ from the poem ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’. He also read Frost’s ‘Fire and Ice’ and said that the world will either end in fire or ice. In this context, he also quoted, ‘Nothing beside remains’ from P.B. Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’

. He also read the creations of Urdu and Hindi poets like Ghalib, Shakeel Badayuni and Kabir. He chose to recite Kabir’s ‘Ghoonghat Ke Pat Khol’ and excerpts from Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas. Going back to his Kashmiri roots, he sang a song in Dogri quite beautifully and concluded the evening with the recitation of ‘Shanti Mantra’ in Sanskrit, uttering Om! 

MANDIRA GHOSH

First Published in IIC Diary (December 2023–January 2024)




‘सर सर सरला’ उर्फ ‘श्रंगार काण्ड’… मंच पर कविता

समीक्षा: अनिल गोयल

मंच पर कविता का मंचन लगभग बीस-बाईस वर्ष पूर्व देखा था, जब भोपाल से भारत रंग महोत्सव में आई विभा मिश्रा का नाटक ‘उनके हिस्से का प्रेम’ देखा था. मंच पर वही कविता एक बार फिर मंचित होती देखी, वशिष्ठ उपाध्याय के निर्देशन में मकरन्द देशपाण्डे के नाटक ‘सर सर सरला’ में, जिसे संजीव कान्त के रंगसमूह ‘कॉमन पीपुल’ ने ‘श्रृंगार काण्ड’ के नाम से 17 मार्च 2024 को प्रस्तुत किया. प्रस्तुति गुरुग्राम में महेश वशिष्ठ के ‘रूफटॉप’ प्रेक्षागृह ‘रंगपरिवर्तन’ में हुई. इस प्रकार के एक छोटे से, ‘इंटिमेट’ स्टूडियो प्रेक्षागृह में इस नाटक की सुन्दर प्रस्तुति ने अभिभूत कर दिया, कि कविता आज भी जीवित है! प्रकाश की सीमित उपलब्ध व्यवस्था के बीच, अभिनय के अतिरिक्त कोई उपकरण कलाकारों के पास नहीं बचता! और सभी कलाकारों ने उसका भरपूर उपयोग किया!

बायें से: नाटक के निर्देशक वशिष्ठ उपाध्याय, रंगकर्मी महेश वशिष्ठ, नाट्य समीक्षक अनिल गोयल

और मंच पर ही नहीं, कविता दर्शकों के बीच भी विराजमान रही, जहाँ नाटक के दौरान लगभग डेढ़ घंटे में मुझे एक बार भी कोई व्यक्ति मोबाइल पर सन्देश देखता हुआ तक भी नजर नहीं आया! इसे नाटक की प्रस्तुति के उत्कृष्ट होने के प्रमाण के रूप में भी लिया जा सकता है! और मुझे लगा, कि तीन पीढ़ियों को लेकर भी कोई परिवार वहाँ नाटक देखने आया हुआ था! यही चीजें रंगमंच के भविष्य के प्रति विश्वास जगाती हैं!
मंच पर प्रो. जी.पी. पालेकर के रूप में वशिष्ठ उपाध्याय, सरला के रूप में ज्योति उपाध्याय और फणीधर के रूप में तारा सिंह ने अद्भुत कसी हुई प्रस्तुति दे कर दर्शकों को हिलने भर का भी अवसर नहीं दिया! अपनी विद्यार्थी की अनुरक्ति से दिग्भ्रमित से प्रो. पालेकर (वशिष्ठ उपाध्याय), अपने आदर्श अध्यापक के प्रति रसीला अनुराग लिये सरल सी सरला (ज्योति उपाध्याय), और सरला की इस अनुरक्ति से परेशान फणीधर (तारा सिंह), जिसे सरला के एक अन्य साथी केशव के साथ विवाह के दंश को भी झेलना पड़ता है – इन चार पात्रों की इस चतुष्कोणीय प्रेम कथा मनुष्यों के बीच के सम्बन्धों की जटिलता के प्रश्न को बहुत सुन्दर तरीके से प्रस्तुत करती है, जिसमें मंच पर केशव कभी उपस्थित नहीं होता. वशिष्ठ उपाध्याय और ज्योति उपाध्याय ने बहुत कसे हुए तरीके से अपनी भूमिकाएँ निभाई हैं. लेकिन जिस तरीके से तारा सिंह ने एक झल्लाये हुए कुंठित प्रेमी की कठिन भूमिका को निभाया है, जिसमें एक ओर उसके प्रोफेसर हैं, दूसरी ओर वह लड़की है जिसे वह मन ही मन प्रेम करता है, और तीसरी ओर एक अन्य सहपाठी है, जिसके साथ सरला विवाह कर लेती है, वह दर्शनीय था!
‘कॉमन पीपुल’ की रजत जयन्ती के अवसर पर उन्होंने महेश वशिष्ठ और हरि कश्यप को सम्मानित किया. इस सम्मानित व्यक्तियों साथ मुझ अकिंचन को भी सम्मिलित करके उन्होंने अपनी श्रेष्ठता का ही परिचय दिया!




World’s largest literature festival concludes

Einstein World Records gives certificate of achievement

The last day was dedicated to the differently abled writers

More than 850 children of Delhi NCR More took part in the programme ‘Aao Kahani Bune’

New Delhi, 16 March 2024: The Festival of Letters 2024, which is being organized by Sahitya Akademi as the world’s largest literature festival, concluded today. The last day of this six-day festival was dedicated to differently abled writers. To provide national platform to differently abled writers All India Differently Abled Writers’ Meet was organized. To awaken interest in literature among children many competitions were organized for more than 850 children at the programme ‘Aao Kahani Bune’. Today’s other important programmes included “Symposium on the Life and Works of Gopi Chand Narang”, “Translation in a Multilingual, Multicultural Society”, “Preservation of Indian Languages”, “Translation as Rewriting/re-creation in the Indian Context”, “Indian English Writing and Translation”. Apart from this, the ongoing national seminars on “Indian Oral Epics” and “Post-Independence Indian Literature” also concluded.
Considering this six-day festival as the world’s biggest literary festival, today the team of Einstein World Records, Dubai, presented the certificate of a world record in ceremoniously to Sri Madhav Kaushik, Prof. Kumud Sharma and Dr. K. Sreenivasarao, respectively President, Vice President and Secretary, Sahitya Akademi. The certificate mentions the participation of more than 1100 writers in 190 sessions in this world’s largest literature festival that lasted six days and over 175 languages were represented. Delivering the inaugural address at the inaugural session of the All India Differently Abled Writers’ Meet, renowned English scholar Prof. G.J.V. Prasad said that we have to work with awareness and affection in connection with the differently abled. Disability is not congenital but many times we acquire it due to our own ignorance and carelessness. He requested all the differently abled writers to identify their special abilities and work on them, they must achieve their destination. In her presidential address, Vice President of Sahitya Akademi, Prof. Kumud Sharma, while discussing the achievements of the differently abled people in various fields, said that the differently abled people will have to move forward with the energy and courage, only then they will be able to achieve their desired destination.
At the beginning of the inaugural session, Sahitya Akademi Secretary Dr. K. Sreenivasarao while giving the welcome address said that Sahitya Akademi is feeling proud to have differently abled writers from 24 Indian languages present here today. Remembering the great writer and critic Gopichand Narang, a symposium was organized on his literary contribution. The chief guests of which were Sri Gulzar and Narang ji’s wife Manorama Narang. Sri Gulzar in his inaugural address said that the personality and work of Gopi Chand Narang is a beautiful combination of his talent and greatness. The key-note was given by the eminent Urdu scholar Nizam Siddiqui. Sadiqur Rahman Kidwai delivered his speech as the special guest. Sahitya Akademi President Madhav Kaushik presided over. Introductory remarks were made by Sri Chandra Bhan Khayal, Convener of the Urdu Advisory Board. Important writers and scholars who participated in these programmes were – Harish Narang, Damodar Khadse, Anvita Abbi, Rita Kothari, K. Enoch, Debashish Chatterjee, Udaya Narayana Singh, Mamang Dai, Sukrita Paul Kumar, Shafe Kidwai, Shamim Tariq.

(K. Sreenivasarao)




On Starvation and War Without Peace

Famine & War are Brothers Image: Tufts University

On Starvation

 She is eighteen 

An age to dance.

.. She knows not her age 

Her face wrinkled with sunlight and dust

 Once could have been pretty

 Now in her tattered clothes,

 With swollen belly lying on a street Begs in a broken bowl.

 The remaining one rupee Snatched by a rogue

 Tomorrow death may strike On an unknown street 

Tomorrow death may strike in any street

 Across the continents….

 Millions will starve Millions will die

 For want of food…

 Only one question will be asked to them 

By the prosperous “Go and search for work!” 

Work? 

Woman Near the River

 Diverged distant dreams

 Shattered dreams 

Of life and beyond life 

Deaths seemed to be easy on them

 Dreams that are now non-existent. beneath the yellow sand of the riverbank 

Breaking sand, one could see …

Fossilized bodies of frozen women 

Bodies earlier drenched in red. 

By men

 Their men

 Our men

 Your men 

My men. 

War and No Peace

Do you want to know 

Meaning of Peace?

Then

Read Kafka. 

If you want to know 

Of our powerlessness 

Then

Read Camus.

If you want to know

About war

Just

Listen to 

The music of

Ukrainian singers.
Rhythm of their instruments..

The songs are not melodies

They are  shrieks .

Instruments measure

the noise of the wreck….

And when  you really want to wail

Look at

Picture of

The Last Supper

Jesus will make you sob

He will make you cry…

Mandira Ghosh .




Nagaland and other poems

Hornbill Festival

Nagaland

Conversations with old friends
Remembering the good old bad old
Days in Nagaland.
Bonding and exchanging of views.

Talking of the Hornbill festival,
Weaving and craft traditions,
Bamboo and indigenous knowledge
Folklore and folk songs.
Rice beer and dried pork
Dal, chaawal and laipatta.
Having squash and kachu
And fish pie.
Christmas songs and blessings.

Graduate School

Reading Structuralist Poetics
And Writing and Difference
And S/Z by Barthes brings up
Old memories of
Graduate school in Syracuse.

Poetry workshops,
Celestial Seasonings tea,
And Fig Newtons.
Inspiration.

Chinese New Year

Celebrations in Syracuse
With friends from Mainland China
And Hong Kong.
Dances and food and cheer.

Walking to Westcott store
To get groceries.
Walking back on icy sidewalks.
Going to the International Student’s House
For get-togethers and celebrations.




Working Women’s Hostel and other poems / Rachna Joshi

Working Women’s Hostel

High walls, unkempt lawn—
Inside the lounge, a dusty picture of Adhya Jha hangs
Covered with cobwebs.

From the mess, Rajrani waddles through the door
While Jaswant and Babu Lal laze in the sun,
.
It’s the month of Magh
The coldest of the year.
Freezing in heaterless rooms;
Fingers numb with cold, Sheela and Sonia
Wring socks and undies in dingy bathrooms.

Togged up for outings to Hauz Khas village
We drink orange juice at wayside stalls
And splurge on a bandhni sari for lohri
Or the occasional party where you meet the bohemian crowd—
The bearded painter delighting everyone
With an impromptu sketch;
Visits to Belu mamu near Sangam cinema.

Glued to Aap ki Adalat on TV
We hide the hair dryer
From the snooping eye’s of the warden’s pet.
Forging signatures in night-out registers;
We eat Manipuri chicken and dosas
And drink beer in camaraderie
Behind closed doors.

Late at night, when all are asleep.
I can hear Dhaneshwari sweeping the floor,
Rotting food, and cats overturning the garbage bins
As Rajwati bunks the third day.

Everyone waits for release
From the hostel,
Which comforts and cramps
Stifles and protects
Sanctuary or cell.

(From Crossing the Vaitarani, Rachna Joshi, 2008, Writer’s Workshop, Kolkata)

Jageshwar

Twelve ancient temples in Jageshwar.
The initial pines lead to the inevitable deodar.
Its green, dark needles—vertical layers moving in wayward lines.
We tramped (modern half-breeds, urbane, mixed-up),
To seek the benediction of the ancient world.
Like plants that become deformed in their reaching back,
The roots entwined, the leaves losing sap.

The constraints of caste and region have feathered
And tarred our faces. We are the pariah Indians,
The few idealists,
Who seek oneness in a country torn
By every known difference.

Could I say when I reached the humped group of temples
Guarded by the sentinel wind of the Himalayas
That I desired union?The lingam leering at the obscenity of my prurient soul,
The world, yes—the flesh and paradise,
The same old grind-show of everyman and god.

I have tried to taste of the tree of knowledge,
Have aspired beyond the limits
Of an Indian Brahmin girl,
Born with a bewildering array of puritan forefathers
Who recited hymns and shlokas
For all occasions.
For birth, marriage, childbirth, fornication
Adultery, murder and what have you.
With sacred threads and grey ashes,
They broke the coconuts of inauguration.

I rise like a throwback—I muck up everything down the line,
The generations-old intellect, the strict decorum.
My blood wants the palpability of earthly love,
Not to obscure the predatory passions
Within the sanctified code.

Till I passed Jageshwar,
The clotted deodars, the smokewood huts,
The scattered pines, the humped shrines.
Shaggy closeness of rhododendrons, smells of raw peaches,
The leopard-tracks, the wild bird’s cry
The pit-viper’s slither, the pariah’s bark,
The mountain streams and the twisted trees,
The wooden mounds that burn the dead.
I felt like a girl going to harvest new green stalks,
The first of the season,
In an old village set in the pines—with twelve ancient temples
And the bells chiming for the snows across the valley.

(From Configurations, Rachna Joshi, 1993, Rupa & Co., New Delhi)

Writing Poetry

Those days I wanted
To write big poems,
Full of words, blood images, multiple voices, epilogues
And prologues.
It was the first flush of love
After reading the Waste Land.
I wrote about violence, assumed roles, hammered out
Universal truths
In short, I was prolific.

And then condensation—
Like the tower we saw from the cockpit.
Imagining from it Delhi’s green trees, yellow laburnums,
Neat roads;
Leaving out what passed between
Your strange disheveled being—my robust, fanciful self.
And now it seems such a marvelous paradox,
Like a dinosaur that has lived on.
Poetry is dead, Marxism defunct, what survives is computers.
I’m going to California to be a beach bum.

Why has the fragile, the knotted, the perplexing gone?
Einstein who could put e=mc2 on a sheet of paper
And still play the violin.
Words engulf me…intertextuality, semiotics, phenomenology.
Maybe writing was not what I thought.

It is to me warm and moaning, like Gilbert’s Pewter,
The Science of the Night, The Fly, The Seagull.
It is so many things…so many sacraments.
It is Tuesday afternoon…reading what Kath or what Karen
Or what Ruth has to say.
It is Yeats…it is Sheila invoking the loons.
It is my mother at home,
To whom I write of my attempts, my trials, my failures
It is hysteria at times.

And when I glance out…the world has moved away
My childhood has come again…the words I heard
Are still true.
The red mud and dry pine needles of Shillong Peak
Still flow down while I, ten years old, and my brother, fourteen,
Squabble up the mountain trail.

Our boots are muddy, and this is North America.
There is still a blue lake, the leaves are withering.
O look! They fall…and the orange sunlight
Falls full on the trees—the leaves yellow, and brown and red.
And you, my friend, talking of Walden, of Relativity, of intuitions,
Showing me at other times your paper machines, your laboratory,
Your crazy oak tree from the forest of Sherwood.
The trail never ending…the low voices of otter.
It is a deerslayer country, it is the land of the Mohicans.
(From Configurations, Rachna Joshi, 1993, Rupa & Co., New Delhi)

MONSOON

The Yamuna swells
across field and marsh
as wind and water lash the city.

A curtain of rain
catches scooter and cyclist
in its wake.

Rain falls through me
Through my past
Through memory
Through grandmother’s eyes
When they would water.

The magnolias fall to one side
and the Ashok and Eucalyptus
shine with silvery glow.

Telephone lines go bust
electricity and power surge and wane
and connectivity is a poor Morse Code.

E-mails dysfunction
Friends blotted out
News blotted out
What happened to Khashoggi
Did Obama get elected
Or did Urijit Patel resign.

Rain flows out
washes the roads
and fuses the landscape. 

The rain unravels like music
Mallikarjun Mansur singing Megh Malhar
Fuzon belting out Saawan beeto jaye piharwa
Jagjit Singh singing of saun da mahina
And woh kaagaz ki kashti, woh baarish ka paani.

A loving refrain
it inundates my being,
envelopes the spirit
washing out the day’s drudgery.

Crossing the Yamuna by metro
I see again scattered hutments
and withered fields of grain
needy farmers waiting
for the river to replenish their fields
by forgetting its banks
and spilling itself widely.

The river will withdraw into its channel,
silt-laden banks will sprout again
lush and green.

I too feel like rich accumulated
silt, ready for the language
of change to grow in me, say
things I’ve never said before. 

(From Monsoon and Other Poems, Rachna Joshi, 2020, Tethys, New Delhi)