Lucknow, A father's memories of cities, a child's attempt to draw a perfect circle, an ordinary day that slips past unnoticed and a mother's refusal to remain silent when silence becomes a moral failing - familiar experiences and images open up questions about memory, identity, freedom and human responsibility in "Aamukh".
This debut Hindi poetry collection by IPS officer Satyarth Aniruddh Pankaj brings together more than 70 poems that move from the intimate to the existential, using the vocabulary of everyday life to explore the complexities beneath it.
Published by Rajkamal Prakashan, the collection's engagement with ordinary experience also speaks to a larger purpose of literature - expanding human sensitivity and enabling readers to understand lives and suffering beyond their own.
This was a central theme of noted literary critic Purushottam Agrawal's address at the book's recent release in Lucknow.
Referring to Italian writer Italo Calvino's "Six Memos for the Next Millennium", Agrawal drew attention to the growing coarseness of public discourse, saying, "Television debates and conversations on social media are increasingly marked by abusive language, insensitivity towards human suffering and even the celebration of another person's misfortune."
He described this as a "plague" that had entered language and argued that literature was the means to counter it.
{{/usCountry}}He described this as a "plague" that had entered language and argued that literature was the means to counter it.
{{/usCountry}}"Literature places your experience in a wider perspective," he said.
Understanding the suffering of the poor, he argued, did not require one to be poor; nor did understanding oppression require having personally experienced it. A person did not have to be a woman, Dalit or member of a minority community to comprehend the pain faced by them.
"Creative literature," Agrawal said, "plays a significant role in enabling people to imaginatively experience the suffering of others."
He also lamented what he saw as the "diminishing distinction between poetry and jokes" in popular culture, observing that some widely recognised contemporary poets were often more known for their humour than their poetry.
He urged readers to train themselves to read good literature, including works that demand greater engagement with language and thought.
His observations offer a useful lens through which to approach "Aamukh". Pankaj does not turn his experiences into straightforward philosophical propositions.
As Agrawal noted, he takes the more demanding route of shaping them into poetry, drawing on a language that emerges from an interaction between sensibility, thought and cultural memory.
The collection's emotional and intellectual terrain is populated by familiar figures and places - mother, father, village, home, metropolis, walls, doors and deities. Yet these are not merely objects of nostalgia or description. They become instruments through which the poet examines ethical choices, the passage of time and the conditions that shape individual lives.
In one poem, memories of a father's association with different cities become an exploration of ageing, displacement and belonging.
In another, a child's difficulty in drawing a circle develops into a reflection on how the freedom to experiment gradually yields to the discipline of drawing within prescribed boundaries. The image of an ordinary day, meanwhile, raises the question of how much of human experience goes unnoticed by both memory and history.
Elsewhere, a shared neighbourhood becomes a reflection on community and belonging, while the language of debt and instalments acquires a moral dimension, suggesting the obligations people carry towards relationships, dreams and life.
Some poems explore the unease of an individual surrounded by fear, arguments, machines and familiar structures; others use the language of examination instructions and fixed rules to question the constraints imposed on independent thought.
Agrawal singled out the image of a mother who "would certainly speak whenever remaining silent seemed like a crime". It captures the collection's ability to locate an ethical question within an intimate, everyday relationship.
Pankaj, a 2010-batch IPS officer serving in Uttar Pradesh, was born in Sasaram, Bihar. He holds a master's degree in Hindi and an MPhil from Jawaharlal Nehru University and has published poems, essays and translations in literary magazines and journals.
Some poems in "Aamukh", he said, were written nearly two decades ago and had been preserved over the years before he decided to bring them together in a collection.
Explaining the title, Pankaj said, "In the traditional understanding of dramaturgy, 'Aamukh' is the entry point to a play - the thread through which one enters the world created by its playwright.
He described the book as his first step into the world of published books and expressed the hope that he would continue writing and challenging himself.
"Aamukh" does not seek to offer easy answers to the questions it raises. Its strength lies instead in making the familiar appear newly charged with meaning - allowing a circle, a city, a family memory or an overlooked day to lead the reader towards a larger reflection on being human.
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