Treasurer of Piggy Banks - Vinod Kumar Shukla (Translated from Hindi by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra)

It is a collection of poems by well known writer Vinod Kumar Shukla. I do not understand poetry much but his poems I could make sense of more than others (though the blurb made no sense to me as it compared his poems to maths - another subject I do not understand very well). 

But, as with his stories which I read the other day, there is a stillness that comes into his thought, in his writing. The themes are about birds, rooms, windows, money, bazaars, trees, forests, mountains, keys, wells, rivers, deer, cheetahs,rains, arriving, leaving, ageing, birth, death, things half remembered, writing a poem, adivasis, old age and a few poems for children. Each with an angle that is unique and compassionate, that goes beyond what is said simply by being where it is. He sees life so clearly that we are left wondering at all that his vision encompasses. 

The poems were luckily printed in Hindi on one side and the English translation on the other. I read both and certainly the Hindi original had a different quality. Glad I could read both.

Some excerpts.

'Writing a poem,
worldly matters occupy me
and there's a knock on the door,
I go open it
when I hear the sound.'

As simple as that.

'It hasn't rained yet,
The tree in front of our house
had been cut down,
Is that the reason?"

'Oh adivasis, The trees did not desert you,
nor did you leave the forest on your own,
I saw groups of you walking down city streets this year,
bedraggled children in tow, forest people without forests,
Is that the reason?'   

'The year's now ended,
In the groups of families
I noticed there were no infants,
Is this the beginning
of the end of the adivasis?'

or

"Wherever I go, I carry this inborn death with me,
I'll save it
for as long as I live."

And so much more. Enjoyed reading it a lot.