There is much talk about the recent accomplishment of Hindi literature through Dalit writngsand women writings. This superficial understanding emanates from slogan-mongering social activism. Dalit writings and women writings are not literary accomplishments as they are being made out to be but social achievements that the oppressed sections who had no voice hitherto are articulating through their own perspective. But achievements of a literary kind demand more. To my mind the principal form of Hindi literature is, and has been, poetry.
I have twofold expectations from poetry; i) It must have a tactile aesthetics and create an aural pleasure when I hear its sounds; ii) It must introduce me to a feeling that I have known and experienced but could never articulate. This I believe is the purpose of poetry, that it says the unsaid, sights the unseen and articulates the inarticulate.
I would discuss, in this light and in this context, Bodhisattvas recently published anthology of Hindi poems Khatm Nahi Hoti Baat. Bodhisattva has previously published three anthologies of poems. The simplicity of approach is the distinction of Bodhisattvas poetry and an added attraction is his language marinated in flavour of Avadhi. There is no pretension to intellectualism or any shade of arrogance of being a poetan ailment afflicting many a poet. It is evident that his poems are not laboured attempts at articulation or complex. Often he manages to capture very grave ideas very simply though occasionally the same approach makes the poem so flat that it almost ceases to be a poem.