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For the love of Hindi kavita
On Hindi Diwas, we meet Manish Gupta, who runs a YouTube channel that introduces youngsters to the romance of Hindi poetry
Looking for a short film by Imtiaz Ali, I stumbled upon a video of him reciting a poem. It was Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Mere humdum mere dost. But the simple poetry reading soon transcended into a memorable experience when Ali stopped midway to point out the relevance of Faiz’s works, and how he brought in a new wave in romantic poetry, and then broke off to describe his love for Ernest Hemingway.
Watch Imtiaz Ali read Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s Mere Humdum Mere dost here:
Curious, and craving for more, I start browsing. And what followed was a treasure trove - Manoj Bajpai reading Ramdhari Singh Dinkar or Dhushyant Kumar, Vinay Pathak reading Bhagvaticharan Verma, Swara Bhaskar reading Avtar Singh Sandhu Paash, Saudrabh Shukla reading Bhawani Prasad Mishra, Manav Kaul reading Vinod Kumar Shukl and much more. Each opened a new door into the world of Hindi poetry and a small window into the very personal lives of these public figures.
Watch Manav Kaul read one of his own poems here:
Simply titled Hindi Kavita, this Youtube channel is single-handedly and quite successfully introducing the social media generation to the charm of Hindi poetry.
“Learn poetry to flirt better!” says Manish Gupta, the man who curates the channel. “All these videos are shot inside my house with me and bhaijaan, my maid, manning the camera and lights. That provides the artistes an intimate space to open up. Sometimes we shoot, sometimes we just chat, and sometimes we share a drink and doze off.”
However, mostly shot in shimmering black and white with random pops of colour, these sleek videos have nothing amateurish about them. Gupta, who has a group of friends from the industry helping him with the post-production, says, “We made it a point to do videos that are sleek and stylish. The people you see in our videos look beautiful. It is not just some person reading a poem. Now, when someone new shows up, they know that they are in good hands.”
Finding true love
Gupta, who holds an American passport, was not always this passionate about Hindi poetry. A university topper, he finished his MBA in tourism in 1992 and joined an advertising agency in Indore. A few years into it, he decided to move to Cincinnati in the US where, after spending the initial years as a house husband pursuing his passion for painting, he and his wife moved to New York.
“I joined an IT company and life was great and monotonous. One day, on my way to office, I called my wife and told her that I am bored of this routine life. I don’t want to run after any dream, I want to do something random instead. My wife jokingly suggested that I should then make a movie. I reached office, quit my job, and enrolled myself in New York Film Academy,” says Gupta nonchalantly.
For his graduation submission he made a feature-length film called Indian Fish in American Waters and it opened to packed theatres in a NY Film Festival. And for his next, Karma, Confessions and Holi, starring Sushmita Sen, he got Robert De Nero’s daughter Drena De Niro as a producer. “The film got stuck for various reasons and when it got released, it didn’t do too well,” says Gupta. He came back to India and directed a TV series called Roomies. And while in the US, he also ran a nightclub in Miami for a year.
“My friend had bought two nightclubs for his girlfriends and wanted me to run one. So I did.” But, of course, this was also a fling and he soon got bored. It was not until two years ago that he finally found his true love. Hindi Kavita. But he is a commitment phobe. “I can’t say this is it for me. But as of now, I am loving it,” he says.
Watch Kausar Munir read her own version of Mein aur meri tanhai here:
The window-shopper
Gupta is a vagabond at heart, and he blames it on his childhood. “I was born in a small town and my father was a professor. While growing up I had libraries of books at my disposal. I was not a very social person and spent most of my time reading. Each book gave me a different dream to pursue. So I went on a window-shopping spree with life. I wanted to direct one film, write one novel, travel around the world once, have one painting exhibition, and so on. I hated the word security. I still think it is a very negative word. Today, when I meet students I tell them to go and try everything. It is totally okay to not to know what you want.”
Watch Vinay Pathak read Sita Ka Nidhan from Ram Varma’s Ramayan here:
Getting high on poetry
It was during a casual drinking session that the idea of Hindi Kavita was born. “We were discussing Hindi poetry and suddenly we all realised how much we love it. People started quoting lines, some read out entire poems, and I thought why don’t we shoot this thing and put it up?” says Gupta.
He started off with a group of friends – some were actors, and some technicians working in Bollywood. “It was our love for poetry that got us together.”
It was after he started the youtube channel that Gupta starting discovering and rediscovering Hindi poets. “I have truly discovered in the past few years is (Gajanan Madhav) Muktibodh. But these days I am obsessed with (Avtar Singh Sandhu) Pash.” he says.
Watch Manoj Bajpai read from Ramdhari Singh Dinkar’s Rashmirathi here:
Making Hindi cool
Gupta doesn’t trust his own knowledge of Hindi poetry when it comes to curating the content for the site. “I want to make Hindi cool. We have a panel consisting of senior poets and experts of Hindi poetry like Vishnu Khare, Ashok Vajpeyi, Naresh Saxena, among others, who guide us. We want a fair representation from every genre of classical and the contemporary. We have many new poets reading their own works,” he says. “We are not the Hindi literature department but their advertising division. We are here to create an interest in Hindi poetry. We look at a poet as a brand. After watching the video, people should feel the urge to discover the poet.
Regional gems
Gupta now aims to go beyond curating the youtube channel and make this into a movement. And he wants students to take this forward. Last month he gave a talk at the TEDx event at Banaras Hindu University on the how the glamorisation of English speech and writing has negatively impacted the aesthetic value of Hindi. Apart from championing Hindi poetry and the language in general, Gupta also has two more youtube channels, one dedicated to Urdu poetry and the other to Punjabi.
Sample Vibha Rani ‘s Gaali singing here:
“There are interesting works happening in regional languages across India. We need to get them translated and make them accessible to wider audience. I want to work with all Indian languages,” he says. But as of now Gupta is trying to figure out how to finance the project. “So far I have done it on my own, but this will require sponsors. But I am very discerning as I don’t want people with any kind of religious of political agenda to get into this.”
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