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Canvas—a Book of Poems
It must now be recognised that there is also a new generation of Indians in the country as well as abroad, which understands Hindi. However, for one reason or another, it is not comfortable with the script. This book attempts to reach out to them. The Roman transcription and the English translation is a help to them. The translation should be considered only a help to the reader and is in no way the true reflection of the poems in Hindi. But it helps in appreciating the original in Hindi. The collection contains poems that vary from being brief pithy comments on nature, like the draining of the wet colours of the rainbow (page 106), or the captive heartbeat of the sea in the shell, to an excruciating commentary on the changing values of life in the poem about the visibility of the Ganga and the vanishing of the Saraswati (page 133). The poems are clearly a reflection of a sensitive soul’s response to the inevitability of change in life. But in doing so, Viky Arya brings alive the mundane life of Benares, or for that matter any town in the Hindi heartland, with word pictures that have been painted with the ease of a consummate artist. Her ability to express more with just a few strokes of brush is best illustrated in a short poem, "Main phati dharti ke hoton sa/ pukarta hee reh gaya,/ aas ka who badal magar/ bin barse chala gaya." Much of the country is familiar with the image of "parched lips" of the earth and what it means when the clouds of hope teasingly drift away. Viky Arya is not just a new star on the firmament but an original one, too. Her style is easy, as she reaches out to the reader with the familiarity of ages. She is a serious student of life and a number of poems display her concern for not only contemporary dilemmas, but also for matters that go into the making of human soul. It would be interesting to wait and see what she has to offer to the readers in future. She holds out promise but her real test, if she has to create a permanent niche for herself in the history of Indian literature, will be when she attempts longer version of poetry dealing with the eternal questions of life. The present collection is pleasing and because of the brevity of the poems, with few exceptions, the metre and rhythm are not a challenge. However, this book has raised expectations and all those who know what truly great poetry demands of the creator hope that she will master the technique of the longer poems and also grapple with the eternal questions of life meaningfully. She has in her poem on page 153, soared away, now she has no option but to keep flying and in the process compose poems that describe the space and what it really contains. Finally, the whole team needs to be complimented for giving the readers a new experience. The book is bound to transcend traditional Hindi readers, which is good for Hindi language as well as literature. |
A refreshing collection of
Viky Arya’s poems has rightly been claimed as a pioneering effort, not
only because of the content but also the experimental form of the book.
For the discerning, though, the poems reflect the intimate nature of the
images, reminding of experiences that are so close to our life. But
first about the experiment that this book is.