Sachchidanand Hiranand Vatsyayan ‘Ajney’ was born in 1911 in the Kasia (Kushinagar) area of Deoria district, U.P. His early education took place in Jammu-Kashmir and he did his B.Sc. from Lahore. Due to his participation in the revolutionary movement, Ajney also had to go to jail.

Completely dedicated to literature and journalism, Ajney traveled extensively in India and abroad. He held and left many jobs. Ajney has a wide-ranging influence on Hindi poetry after independence. Apart from poetry, he has also written in many genres like stories, novels, travelogues, essays, criticism, etc.

His major works are - Bhagnadoot, Chinta, Ari O Karuna Prabhamay, Indradhanu Raunde Hue Ye, Aangan Ke Paar Dwar (poetry collections), Shekhar: Ek Jeevani, Nadi Ke Dweep (novels), Vipathga, Sharanarthi, Jaydol (story collections), Trishanku, Atmanepad (essays), Are Yayavar Rahega Yaad (travelogue). The four Saptaks edited by Ajney, including Tar Saptak, hold an important place in the history of contemporary Hindi poetry. Ajney was also honored with many national-international awards including the Sahitya Akademi and Jnanpith awards. He passed away in 1987.

The imprint of intellectuality is found in Ajney’s entire writing. At the core of his writing is the problem of identifying individuality.

Why Do I Write?

Why do I write? This question seems very simple but is also very difficult. Because its true answer is related to the inner levels of a writer’s life. It is certainly not easy to bind all of them into a few sentences in brief, who knows if it is even possible? Only this much can be done that some of them are touched upon - especially those whose knowledge could be useful for others.

One answer is that I write precisely to know myself why I write - without writing, the answer to this question cannot be found. In fact, this is the true answer. Only by writing does the writer recognize that inner compulsion due to which he wrote - and only by writing does he become free from it. I too write to gain freedom from that inner compulsion, to look at it and recognize it with detachment. I believe that all creators - because not all writers are creators; nor is all their writing a creation - all creators write for this reason. It is true that after gaining some fame, some writing is also done due to external compulsion - at the insistence of editors, at the demand of publishers, due to economic necessity. But firstly, a creator always honestly maintains this distinction before himself: which creation is the fruit of inner inspiration, which writing is due to external pressure; secondly, it also happens that the external pressure actually ceases to be pressure, it becomes as if the occasion for inner awakening.

Here, the nature and self-discipline of the creator are very important. There are some such lazy beings that without this external pressure they cannot write at all - it is with its support that their inner compulsion becomes clear - this is somewhat like someone lying in bed after waking up in the morning until the clock’s alarm rings. In this way, the creator does not actually surrender to external pressure, he only uses it like a supporting instrument so that his connection with physical reality remains. I do not need this support, but it never becomes an obstacle either. If I maintain the comparison of getting up, I would say that I get up on my own in the morning, but if the alarm rings too, I don’t consider it any harm.

What is this inner compulsion? It is very difficult to describe it. Perhaps it is less difficult to say what it is not. Or an example can be given - perhaps that will be more useful. Let me discuss one of my poems a little so that my point becomes clear.

I have been a student of science, my regular education was in that subject. What an atom is, how we reached that step in science where the splitting of the atom became possible while studying radioactive elements, what are the effects of radioactivity - I had bookish or theoretical knowledge of all this. Then when that atom bomb fell on Hiroshima, I read its news; and kept reading the description of its subsequent effects as well. Thus, historical evidence of its effects also came before me. Intellectual rebellion against this misuse of science was natural, I wrote something in articles etc. too, but the compulsion at the level of feeling is a matter beyond intellectual grasp and its logic is also different. Therefore, I did not write a poem on this subject. Though during the war, I had seen on India’s eastern border how soldiers would throw bombs in the Brahmaputra and kill thousands of fish. While their need was little, and the anguish that surged within from this waste of life, I could to some extent experience the useless destruction of life by the atom bomb through that.

When I got an opportunity to go to Japan, then I also went to Hiroshima and saw that hospital where people injured by radioactive substances had been suffering for years. Thus, direct experience also happened - but feeling is a deeper thing than experience, at least for a creator. Experience is of what has happened, but feeling assimilates that truth with the help of sensation and imagination which has not actually happened to the creator. What did not come before the eyes, what did not come into the experience of what happened, that very thing comes before the soul in blazing light, then it becomes feeling-perception.

So, even after seeing everything in Hiroshima, I did not write anything immediately, because there was a lack of this very feeling-perception. Then one day, while wandering on the street there, I saw that on a burnt stone there was a long white shadow - someone must have been standing there at the time of the explosion and the rays of the scattered radioactive substance from the explosion must have been blocked in him - those that moved forward from around scorched the stone, those that got stuck on that person must have turned him into vapor and blown him away. In this way, the entire tragedy was as if written on the stone.

Seeing that shadow was like a slap. Speechless history as if suddenly rose like a burning sun somewhere inside and set. I would say that at that moment, the atomic explosion came into my feeling-perception - in one sense, I myself became the experiencer of the Hiroshima explosion.

From this, that compulsion awakened. The inner restlessness moved from the realm of intellect to the realm of sensation… then slowly I could separate myself from it and suddenly one day I wrote a poem on Hiroshima - not in Japan, after returning to India, while sitting on a train.

Whether this poem is good or bad; I am not concerned with that. To me, it is true, because it is born of feeling, this is the important thing to me.

Questions-Exercises

1. According to the writer, feeling helps much more in his writing than direct experience, why?

2. When and how did the writer feel himself to be the experiencer of the Hiroshima explosion?

3. Based on ‘Why Do I Write?’, explain that-

(क) What things motivate the writer to write?

(ख) How can the inspiration sources of any creator encourage someone else to create anything?

4. For some creators, along with self-experience/one’s own experience, external pressure is also important. What can these external pressures be?

5. Do external pressures only affect creators associated with writing or also artists associated with other fields, how?

6. How can you say that the poem written on Hiroshima is the result of both the writer’s internal and external pressure?

7. The Hiroshima incident is the most horrible misuse of science. In your view, where and how is the misuse of science happening?

8. As a sensitive young citizen, what is your role in preventing the misuse of science?

The poem ‘Hiroshima’ by Ajney, included in the poetry collection ‘Ari O Karuna Prabhamay’ published in 1959, is being given here-

Hiroshima

One day suddenly The sun rose Oh, not on the horizon, In the city square: Sunlight poured But not from space, From cracked earth.

Shadows of human beings Directionless Fell everywhere - that sun Had not risen in the east, it Poured suddenly Right in the middle of the city: As if the wheels of The chariot of the sun of time Breaking, oh, scattered In all ten directions.

A few moments of that rise-set! Only of one blazing moment’s Noon that absorbs the visible. Then?

Shadows of human beings Did not fade, growing long-long: Humans all turned to vapor. Shadows are still written On scorched stones On the surface of deserted streets.

The sun created by man Absorbed man by turning him into vapor. This burnt shadow Written on stone Is the testimony of man.