8 Poems by Akademi Award winners Ashok Vajpeyi and Uday Prakash to make your Dull Sundays AWESOME!

The Akdemi Award winners are in news for their silent yet persistent, non violent yet powerful rebellion against PM Modi. The Akademi Award winners are sad about the rampant communalism in the country which never existed in the times of Congress. The Akademi Award winners have returned their Akademi Awards to protest against the death of writer and rationalist MM Kalburgi and the lynching of a Muslim Man in Dadri, Uttar Pradesh.

I went through the work of some of the Akademi Award winners and I was truly impressed. Their poems are almost always written in indirect speeches which are almost always undecipherable for the common masses. The use of personifications is top class. The poets that impressed me the most were Shri Ashok Vajpeyi ji and Shri Uday Prakash Ji., hence I have shortlisted 8 poems of theirs which touched me the most. I have added literal English Translations for the Non Hindi Speakers. Please note that I have used only first few lines for poems which are more long.

These 8 poems have the power to lighten up the dullest days and crack the dullest soul up.

1. Adhpake Amrud ki tarah by Ashok Vajpeyi

The rabbits are nibbling the earth in dark

Slowly

The ants are hauling the earth

Slowly

The scorpions are rolling, with the earth at the crosshairs of their stings

My daughter however

Is clutching the earth

Like a raw guava in her hands

2. Ek Alag Sa Mangalvaar by Ashok Vajpeyi

That could have been any afternoon

Any Tuesday

When it was 3 PM

Something like whatever thing

In which life could have been just like that

But it wasn’t supposed to happen

3. Koi nahi Sunta by Ashok Vajpeyi

No one pays attention to hollers

But it listens with ears wide open

The agile cat on the stairs

Who doesn’t know if it should stay?

Or flee in fright

4. Tokni by Ashok Vajpeyi

Just got to know that the veggie basket isn’t around

Used to be here earlier

In which gloom and veggies were stored

Now that it is not there

There is an acute shortage of

Containers to store gloom

5. Patti by Ashok Vajpeyi

It grew as much as it could, that leaf

Further growth wasn’t in its control or the tree’s control

It trembled less that what it actually could

It was in its control

Entangled between growing and trembling

It was a leaf

6. Tibbat by Uday Prakash

The llamas from Tibet

Keep wandering

While chanting their hymns

Their flocks of mules

Walk in the lawns

But don’t eat the marigold shrubs

Hey dad, how many flowers are there in a marigold flower?

7. Rajdhani me Bail by Uday Prakash

Holding the clouds on its horns

It stands beneath the thrill of the sky

Its skin tingles for a long time

When a water drop hits it

I watch it

Drenching

Till long

8. Maarna by Uday Prakash

After dying

Man doesn’t think

After dying

Man doesn’t speak

When a man doesn’t think

And speak

He dies

These amazing poems have awakened the poet in me too, so here I go:

As he was watching TV in the afternoon

With a remote in his hand

He suddenly remembered

That he needs to drink water

In the hullabaloo of life

One doesn’t even remember to drink water