About Prabhat, by Giriraj Kiradoo

The Sad, Depress­ing Poems of a Young Man from the West­ern Desert of India Who Also Writes Joy­ful Vers­es for Chil­dren and thus Lives in His Own Lit­tle Paradise

By Giri­raj Kiradoo

1

Where do the poets come from?

In Hin­di, the lan­guage of the pro­le­tar­i­an façade, many of them come from uni­ver­si­ties and work for uni­ver­si­ties. Oth­ers work for the media and pub­lish­ing hous­es. Only a very few do not work for the Hin­di intel­li­gentsia or the Indi­an state.

Where does poet­ry come from?

In Hin­di, the lan­guage of rev­o­lu­tion­ary rhetoric, it often comes from the upper caste, mid­dle class draw­ing rooms.

Prab­hat, a young man belong­ing to a Sched­uled Tribe (a bureau­crat­ic coinage that denotes a group of unpriv­i­leged trib­al com­mu­ni­ties) called ‘Meena’, came to Jaipur, an aspir­ing metrop­o­lis in the midst of the West­ern Desert, to study Hin­di lit­er­a­ture. He did his Master’s and learned to drop his sur­name Meena (a sign of his ‘caste’). Pro­tec­tive dis­crim­i­na­tion by the Indi­an State had made sure that many young men from his com­mu­ni­ty would become civ­il ser­vants and serve the state.

Prab­hat, while fail­ing in all his half-heart­ed attempts at becom­ing a teacher, learned how to be a poet and unlearned most of what he was taught at the uni­ver­si­ty. At 40, unem­ployed for the bet­ter part of a crop year, he is a free­lance con­tent devel­op­er for some non-gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tions work­ing in the field of pri­ma­ry edu­ca­tion. Instead of becom­ing a teacher, he has become the dar­ling of chil­dren. Instead of lec­tur­ing in a class­room, he sings for them in the open. A bard and a friend – quite an achieve­ment, giv­en his poet­ic tem­pera­ment and his exis­ten­tial dis­com­fort with the world he has to make do with.

2

He writes for chil­dren, besides writ­ing for him­self. In Hin­di, he is a mis­fit among the ‘Face­book stars’ of ‘change’ poet­ry. He has left the urban sur­round­ings and has made a reverse-migra­tion back to India’s trou­bled rur­al heart­land. His poet­ry makes lit­tle effort to con­ceal his dis­com­fort with the world and makes no effort at mak­ing itself vis­i­ble and audible.

3

Bril­liant­ly trans­lat­ed by Rahul Soni, these poems take us to famil­iar fields and unfa­mil­iar fac­to­ries. Famil­iar girls and unfa­mil­iar rail­way sta­tions. All too famil­iar thirst and a some­what unfa­mil­iar remem­brance. These poems don’t like metaphors, and have lit­tle use for them. They don’t want to be read as cod­ed mes­sages; instead, they make every detail so trans­par­ent that metaphors hes­i­tate to impli­cate them.

Mov­ing slow­ly between sub­tle hope and unmit­i­gat­ed despair like a specter; Prab­hat is a poet of Hindi’s own des­tiny in a neolib­er­al, glob­al­ized India.