The 2025 Jnanpith award for Hindi literature, the highest literary honor in India, has been awarded to Vinod Kumar Shukla (88), a poet and writer of adult and children’s fiction literature. He happens to be one of my favorite poets.
In the summer of 2024, I had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet him at his home in Raipur, India. I first encountered one of his poems almost a decade ago and immediately teared up. Within minutes, an English translation of it popped up in my head. Later that week, after a group meditation at an Awakin Circle, I read it to the sixty people in attendance in the living room of Dineshand Harshida Mehta in Santa Clara, CA. At the request of some appreciative listeners, I added it to the ServiceSpace blog, where over five thousand readers read it.
I read poetry as a poetry lover, not as a literary critic who might evaluate the contribution in a comparative analysis or put it in the context of historical or contemporary literary dialogs amongst the writer’s peers. I read extensively, and now and then, a piece of writing becomes ‘mine’, like some songs become era-worms. It is as if the poem is resonating with something deep within my being and makes my heart sing. The silences in between the words and what is conveyed in-between the lines manages to capture a vibe that lands like it is my soul finding expression in words.
A strong internal drive guides much of what I do in the world, but I cannot articulate what that is in words. So, rational or irrational, I follow that instinct as I pick my path and battles with the worlds I inhabit. These select poems are my companions, to reassure, to celebrate, and to lend me courage of my convictions. I feel heard and seen, and I know there is a poet somewhere who understands what animates me, even if I tread solo on the path. I make no excuses for my eclectic tastes and limited reading. I like what I like, and its okay to re-read it with delight.
Poems can be like puzzles that reveal fresh meanings with each re-reading.
When a few of Vinod Kumar Shukla’s poems became amongst my favorites, I felt I had a friend in the poet who knew me better than most. His words spoke to my inner world, intimately well. The poem I read at the Awakin Circle in 2015 has been a perennial favorite that I have read in many other forums.
In 2016, I read it in London, at the poet’s church in the ‘Poetry Not Bombs’ themed Poetry@3 program hosted by Paul McGrane of Poetry Cafe. In 2017, I read it at the San Francisco Lit Quake. I read his poems and my translations at Kaavya Connections: World Poetry, Literature & Music meetups and Poetry of Diaspora in Silicon Valley circles and the online public program Irshaad created by Kohli Sundeep and Sujata Tibrewala.
I read his poems in the open mics hosted by former and current Cupertino poet laureates Kaecey McCormick, Jing Jing Yang, and Keiko O’Leary and Belmont poet laureate Monica Korde. I read it at the multicultural poetry workshop by Mosaic America and Third Thursdays Palo Alto. I even read it in my professional circles, blurring the boundaries between my hobby of reading poetry and my professional work.
How could I profess to be humanizing organizing if I shied away from showing up in my full humanity? I read poems at the India@70 conference of the Ahimsa Center at CalPoly Pomona (2017). I read it at the Academy of Management and affiliated (Western AoM and Indian AOM) conferences and with my groups of Humanistic Management and Management Spirituality and Religion division events. By 2021, I had even published it with my translation in the Organizational Aesthetics poetry special issue journal.
I learned that Vinod Kumar Shukla is still very active in writing and lives in Raipur, and I made the pilgrimage to his home. The Shukla family was very welcoming, even though I was a stranger with zero poetic credibility.
But my good taste was confirmed when Shukla earned the fellowship of the Hindi Akademi, the highest national honor for a writer, the fellowship of the Hindi Akademi, and the prestigious international prize, the Pen Nabakov award for world literature in 2023 (the first person in all of SE Asia to ever win it), which I celebrated in India Currents.
Shukla’s books of fiction have been translated by scholars into English and French, and his work has been published in Granta and other literary magazines with global standing for excellence.
My jitters and excitement settled when I met Shukla; His son, Shaswat Shukla, greeted me at the gate. I fell into a peaceful silence of having arrived at my Shangri-La while the poet, his wife, and son sat with me, in zero awkwardness, as if silence was the most normal thing. It was so overwhelming that I teared up; their warmth came through bearing silent witness.
They offered me a glass of water and said they were honored I’d come all the way to visit. I confessed that it was too far-fetched for me to even dream of ever being connected to them, let alone be with them in their home. I was still in shock, perhaps from the spell cast by a silent invitation in the poems.
“आपने कविता लिख कर मुझे दूर से यहाँ पुकारा है। आप की कविता कि आवाज़ सुन कर मैं यहाँ तक ना जाने कैसे पहुँच गई हूँ। कभी सपने में भी नहीं सोचा था ऐसा कुछ हो सकता है।” (“You called me from afar by writing a poem. I don’t know how I have reached here after listening to the voice of your poem. I had never thought even in my dreams that something like this could happen.”)
We spoke about the art displayed around the room, and I heard stories of the artists who made them. I learned of the temple doors of a nearby 16th-century temple, which provided the inspiration for the main door. Shukla gave me a signed copy of his newest collection of poems and signed copies of books I had brought with me.
I played my favorite piece of music (Mangalam on the Chants of India album by Ravi Shanker, produced by George Harrison) on my phone and shared that it was a steady favorite since 2000, a chant I return to often, just as I do with his poems, because the percussion and chant resets my heartbeat. The family had not heard it before but knew the artists. We talked of our love for nature. All his writings are about nature, said Shukla excitedly. He talked of writing children’s books.
I was introduced to an old family friend, Ramesh Anupam, a writer who, during Covid, did a 100-part series of FB posts on Shukla, soon to be released as a booklet. I was invited to meet his teen grand-daughter in Raipur. Another family friend was recruited to give us a curated tour of the museum of indigenous people.
I visited the temple – a world offering a getaway with tall outer walls enclosing a courtyard, a temple at the center, and trees creating a canopy above three sadhus singing bhajans in the yard and a large communal kitchen with a wood-burning fireplace.
What stays with me from that visit is that artists and art-appreciators play a mutual role for each other. Meeting the author was a better way to connect with their core. There is an energy exchange between the rasik (art appreciator) and the artist that satisfies something within both. There was a sincere and authentic presence, with curiosity and mutual appreciation in our interaction. In my encounter, I felt there was nothing imaginary as his life embodies all that he writes about. His writing is not an escape from reality. It is simply accepting and even celebrating what is, with room for holding on to what is precious, like the memory of losses endured.
When Shukla writes, he brings every reader along on a journey to rediscover what might have remained hidden in plain sight. For me, re-reading his poetry reaffirms and helps me reclaim and retain all that I seek space for in this world. It allows me to bring the joys and wonder of childhood curiosity and the thrill of discovery into my mundane everyday life. The best analogy I have is the feeling of drinking water: crystal clear, transparent, pure, life-giving, and just enough. It satiates my thirst like no other drink ever can.
Defeated, a man sat down
Defeated, a man sat down
A man, I did not know
Defeat, I knew
So I went to this man
And offered my hand
He took my hand to stand
He did not know me
He knew an offered hand
We both walked together
We did not know each other
We did know walking together
Hindi original by Vinod Kumar Shukla
Translation by Jyoti Bachani