Vishal Bhardwaj

All of us know Vishal Bhardwaj as a film-maker whose films have consistently pushed the envelope and as a composer who has churned out some of the biggest chart-toppers in recent years. Here's presenting him in a new avatar: a poet. Over the course of these twenty-five ghazals and an equal number of nazms, Vishal comes across as a poet with a distinctive voice and a style all his own. Whether it is a romantic ode pulsating with an intense passion or yearning, or a bitter, ironic comment on the state of the nation, a gentle sense of wonder, an undeniable rhythm and a subtle intrigue pull one into the poems in Nude, both in the original Hindustani alongside their English translation by Sukrita Paul Kumar. Unusual imagery, an evocative style and an idiom that is contemporary, yet reminiscent of the old-world charm of the Hindi and Urdu poetic traditions, each poem is wrapped in mystique. The Internet and Mirza Ghalib on the roads of Mumbai happily coexist in these poems, offering an insight into how contradictions can be reconciled simply and ingeniously.

Poems

Nude

Sukrita Paul Kumar

Nude: Poems

They cannot live with each other, they cannot live without each other. As children, they squabbled all day long. When they were old enough, they married two brothers, and took with them their feuds to their in-laws. Boisterous and fiery pataakhas, sisters Badki and Chhutki are the bane of each other's existence. Their days start and end with petty squabbles and violent clashes, marked by unapologetic use of free-flowing abuses. But one day things go too far and a decision made upturns the trajectory of both their lives. Based on Charan Singh Pathik's eponymous short story, Vishal Bhardwaj's adaptation is a hilarious tour de force that obliquely and mischievously takes into its ambit notions of patriarchy and diplomacy between nations. This translation, which includes the novella and the screenplay that the film-maker developed from the short story, not only brings to the reader a rustic, elemental tale rooted in the soil, but also provides a unique glimpse into the art of adapting a literary work into film.

Vishal Bhardwaj

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