An indefatigable experimenter with genre and form, Udayan Vajpeyi has written poetry (Kuchh Vakya, Paagal Ganitagya ki Kavitayen), short stories (collected in Sudeshna, Door Desh ki Gandh, Saatvan Button), essays and travelogues (Charkhe par Badhat, Janagarh Kalam, Patjhar ke Paon ki Mehandi), scripts (for Kumar Shahane’s films), and adaptations (of Uttararamacharitam and Abhijnanashakuntalam). He has carried out extended conversations with film maker Mani Kaul and historian Dharmapal, written on the theatre of KN Panikkar and Ratan Thiyam, and translated the Japanese poet Shuntaro Tanikawa into Hindi. His own work has been translated into many languages.
Ret Kinare ka Ghar (2018) gathers short stories written over three decades. One sees many continuities over the years—such as of imagery and ambience—but also unsuspected, astonishing departures that lift the writing to an order of art where the achieved wholeness defies any repeatability. There are at least two stories in this book of 31 that continue to astound and elevate this reader every time he reads them: ‘Ret Kinare ka Ghar’ and ‘Tasvir’.
In the prefatory note to the book, Vajpeyi candidly declares his faith and pursuit. The title of the note calls it, compactly, the enigma of being. The characters struggle to unravel some enigma at the heart of their being, and through them the writer seeks to penetrate the mystery of existence from some unnoticed, unvisited angle in time and space. A writer, according to Vajpeyi, can be recognized by the questions that take shape in his writing and through which he tries to enter this infinite thing called life.