Meeting Benches World art in all forms
It was in the 10th century that authentic Hindi poetry took its form. About 500 million people speak Hindi, in India and abroad, and the total number of people who can understand the language may be 800 million. Hindi can be traced back to as early as the seventh or eighth century. Hindi is the Fifth most spoken language in the world. It is spoken by more than 487 million people in the world.
DEEP IN THE STILLNESS – by Amrita Bharati
He threw me away, like a clod of earth. He didn’t know I was a thing with a soul. He didn’t know I was alive. He kept on throwing me, like a clod of earth, out of his way, onto that neglected path that happened to be mine. And so I kept travelling, along my own way. Each time some fragment broke off, some infatuation, some addiction to happiness, some earthly hope, some dream squandered on man. Each time some fragment of my being would break off. And now it was my turn. The world was already left behind, like a desert in a sandstorm, like an ocean in a hurricane, like a desolate city. Man, step by step descending, was already left behind. And now it was my turn. Standing on the last patch of earth, I gathered myself into a whole thing, and hurled myself into the stillness. This was my silence, pervasive and expansive. Now the world was either a dream, or a sea-flower, imagined at the end of the ocean. Deep in the stillness. Only the sound of my footsteps.
A STANDARD SHIRT – by Mohan Rana
Between midday and nightfall, there comes a time when the day’s noise and actions are already done with, just as now, all desires quenched, I am ready to sit down on any chair. A boy in a yellow shirt has just passed by, and made me think of a shirt of mine, in those old ordinary days. So it was possible. Yes, this life was possible. And here I am, still wearing, a shirt just like that.
A DESIRE IN THE BANGLES – by Gagan Gill
A desire is in the girl’s bangles. First they will break on his bed, then on the threshold of his house. But why on the threshold? Because in the girl there is a woman Mourning, who is not yet a widow, but a widow to be. The girl’s fear throbs in her veins, as far as her bangles. The girl’s desire throbs in them. The girl’s mourning throbs in them. Mourning? Where is the girl’s man, for whom mourning runs in her veins, for whom desire is in her bangles? Her man is caught, in some other body, some other dream, sorrow, other tears. His every sorrow, dream, tear is beyond the reach of the mourning girl. But the girl is only a girl, in her is that primal innocence, madness, death, whose punishment, she will give to that man, one day, when she will break her bangles.
