Author: Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Translator: Pavan K Varma
Publisher: Penguin/Viking
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 67
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670049174
Description
Atal Bihari Vajpayee has been the Prime Minister of India since 1998, and a political worker for over five decades. But he has been a poet for much longer. This selection of twenty-one poems, marked by disarming simplicity, passion and sincerity, highlights his concerns and convictions, both public and private. His themes range from social inequality and the evils of war to the perils of self-serving attitudes and the supreme importance of love for our fellow human beings. Also in the collection are moving the very personal poems written at moments of crisis.
Twenty-One Poems provides a rare and rewarding glimpse into the mind of the leader of over a billion people. The English Translations, by the best-selling author Pavan Varma, retain the simplicity and immediacy of the Hindi originals, which appear alongside the translations in the bilingual edition.
Contents
Author’s Note
Translator’s Note
A New Milestone
Anguish
A Year Has Gone By
Two Quatrains
A New Knot Is Tied
Never Place Me So High
Night’s Passage
Who Are the Kauravas, and Who the Pandavas
Peace of Mind
Let Us Speak to Our Own Selves
What Road Should I Go Down?
Power
A Battle With Death
Resolve
We Will Not Bend
The Agony of Hiroshima
We Shall Not Allow War
Come, Let Us Unravel the Knots of the Mind
The Evening of Life Begins to Fall
No Longer Do I sing
I Sing A New Song
Notes