Atal Bihari Vajpayee was known not only as a political leader but also as a Hindi poet. His poems often explore resolve, uncertainty, patriotism and the need to continue after setbacks. Read apart from public ceremony, such writing can be approached as a reflection on the fragile relationship between courage and doubt. Beginning again The idea of beginning again recognises that a setback does not…
Nissim Ezekiel’s “Night of the Scorpion” recounts a family’s response after the speaker’s mother is stung by a scorpion. The poem observes villagers, religious explanations, practical efforts and a mother’s final words. Its strength comes from allowing different responses to suffering to appear side by side without turning the scene into a simple contest between ignorance and knowledge. The night…
Kazi Nazrul Islam’s writing often draws on multiple religious and cultural vocabularies, creating a poetic world that resists narrow definitions of belonging. His work shows how literary language can bring traditions into conversation and use their shared emotional resources to challenge division. Many references, one voice When a poem brings different mythic or religious references together, it …
Mirza Ghalib’s Urdu and Persian poetry remains central to the ghazal tradition because it allows desire, doubt, wit and grief to exist together. His couplets rarely settle for a simple emotional conclusion. Instead, they reveal a mind examining its own contradictions with both intensity and humour. The couplet’s turn A ghazal couplet often begins with an image or claim and then turns in a surpris…
Kedarnath Singh was a major modern Hindi poet whose work often finds philosophical and emotional depth in ordinary objects, speech and everyday scenes. Rather than relying on grand declarations, his poetry can make a familiar word or thing seem newly strange. This shift in attention is one of the defining powers of lyric art. Making the familiar visible Poetry can change the way readers notice th…
Part 45 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through Indian poetry. Contemporary Malayalam poetry includes voices that bring ordinary labour, inequality and marginalised lives into sharp focus. S. Joseph is often discussed in relation to poetry that questions social hierarchy and gives attention to people overlooked by dominant narratives. This essay considers that social gaze as a way of readi…
Part 43 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through Indian poetry. Firaq Gorakhpuri, the pen name of Raghupati Sahay, was a major Urdu poet whose ghazals explore love, memory, beauty and the complexity of human feeling. His work belongs to a rich tradition in which a couplet can hold several meanings at once: personal, philosophical and social. The ghazal’s architecture A ghazal is built from …
Part 40 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through Indian poetry. Ayyappa Paniker was a major figure in modern Malayalam poetry and literary criticism. His writing helped expand the possibilities of Malayalam verse through modernist techniques, shifts in voice and a willingness to unsettle familiar forms. Rather than offering one fixed message, modernist poetry often asks readers to navigate …
Part 38 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through Indian poetry. Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s Hindi poetry is known for its forceful public voice, historical imagination and engagement with courage, justice and national identity. His work often draws on epic and historical material to ask what people should do when power and morality come into conflict. Courage is not only force Public poetry can…
Part 37 of The Poetry Pulse’s 100-part journey through Indian poetry. Makhanlal Chaturvedi’s Hindi poem “Pushp Ki Abhilasha,” often translated as “The Flower’s Wish,” gives a flower a voice and asks what kind of destiny it should desire. Rather than seeking decoration or personal glory, the flower imagines being used in a cause larger than itself. This close reading focuses on the poem’s key symb…
