when faith is crumbling
while wandering the way
So trust a woman in this world
She will tell the most hidden experience
The only candle that will take you out of your darkness
How many exiles, how many refugees,
how many broken sorrows, how proud
how many birds, how many hunters
Everyone has been relying on a woman’s lap
Those who were defeated were made victorious by the touch of a woman… These few opening lines of a poem by poet Kumar Ambuj ‘Ek Stree Par Kariye Vishwas’ have been placed here only to show that one of the When the most important poet enters the field of prose, even then he weaves the threads of sensation from the edge of words. Now it is his own wish that if he wants to give the name of ‘joke’ to such a serious human heart-deed.
Mazaq is the second collection of short stories by Kumar Ambuj. Earlier in 2008, a collection of short stories named ‘Ichhaayein’ was published, commenting on which famous and senior writer Vinod Kumar Shukla wrote, “Even today, I will keep ‘Ichhaayein’ with me while packing my bags in haste for the journey of creation. , Even if I forget the tiffin of two rotis. It is not just that Kumar Ambuj is established as an important signature of contemporary Hindi literature. His words reach the mind through the eyes like molten iron and stay somewhere in the memories. This applies not only to the poems included in his anthology ‘Kiwad’, ‘Cruelty’, ‘Provisional’, ‘Encroachment’, ‘Amiri Rekha’ and ‘Subtitle’, but also to ‘Desires’ and ‘Mazaak’. Fits perfect.
Ambuj’s specialty is that whether it is prose or poetry, he stands with the ideological and social battle of the struggling man in his writings, and does not leave the bosom of artistic language with intellectualism. His craft is as unique as his story. In his prose-elegance written in July 2014 titled ‘Apni Baarish Ke Beech’, see how the movement between prose and verse breaks down-
“Sometimes she says in the midst of her rain: You know how to get wet, you know how to get wet in the rain. You dare to get wet in the rain so much that it makes me laugh. Your laugh is good, but the rain is also a laugh. You will make yourself sick in the rain. In what rain have you been getting wet for so many years? She seems to be making fun, ridiculing, expressing regret, at some of her acceptance, at some silence and at some laughter But she is repenting. But she understands my longing to get wet in the rain. The heat reaches her. She is made of evaporated water. I have also written a poem on her. Let me recite a little part!
the rain falls on my face
rain falls in my imperceptible
the rain touches my senses
the rain touches my senses
The number of salts and minerals in the earth
and metals and ores
the ones concentrated in my drop of blood
It rains in those blood seas
swinging in the latitudes and longitudes of veins
Like my own rain!
I know that rain cannot be written exactly, completely even in any poem. Not at all in the story. With the touch of prose, it will become detailed and gross. Or maybe it just dissolves into a desert of description. While it rains from every part of it. Even from those organs which are made of dead cells. from his nails. from his cries. And from the eyelashes. Most of all with his hair. Where thick clouds reside, from where clouds arise and water gets wrapped with dust particles. And from there where there are honey-filled honeycombs, creepers, leaves and where there are flowers, fruits flourish and from where showers come. And those places where it rains continuously and those verandahs inside it, which are there only because one can get wet sitting there and those directions from where the water rises. And from where the redness has spread. All such places which are not possible in any description. There are undercurrents within it. Sources that never dry up. There are innumerable immortal springs which appear at the slightest touch. How transparent are his secret waterfalls, how exposed! That’s rain. endless rain…”
When he writes on world cinema, which is often seen on his social media pages, his writing talent and scholarship, along with his choice of words in favor of humanity, start to shine. Ambuj is a strong voice against the standing power and opportunism of this time. When the three representatives of Hindi, young storytellers Manoj Kumar Pandey, Vimal Chandra Pandey and Sandeep Meel released their story-collection ‘Mazaak’ at the World Book Fair, Delhi, they also kept their opinion about it in detail.
Kathakar Manoj had said that this collection of Kumar Ambuj also deserves to be kept in the highly respected tradition of effective works of poet-storytellers in Hindi. Manoj described ‘Mazaak: Kumar Ambuj Ki Kahaniyaan’ as a new step in the story tradition of poet-storytellers like Agneya, Muktibodh and Raghuveer Sahay, while Vimal Chandra Pandey said that the way Kumar Ambuj composes the story is like cinematography. Yes, the colors of his story world are very deep and impressive. Mile said that Kumar Ambuj’s stories are created by a beautiful combination of ideology and art. On the same occasion, senior writer Dr. Durgaprasad Agarwal said that one day only a rare talent can write a story like Manna Dey. He called some of the stories published in the joke collection as authentic marking of the horrific reality of his time.
Ambuj has been honored with ‘Bharatbhushan Agarwal Memorial Award’, ‘Makhanlal Chaturvedi Award’, ‘Srikant Verma Award’, ‘Girija Kumar Mathur Award’, ‘Kedar Samman’ and ‘Vagishwari Award’ for poetry.
In today’s cruel socio-political scenario, the eternal aspiration to get back the land under our feet which is continuously being snatched from us, is the unremarkable tone of these stories of Ambuj. These stories introduce us to completely new forms of life by keeping the troubles of the man surrounded from all sides, his everyday realities in readable metaphors, unique idioms. In today’s world, seeking personal solitude, asking for a place to picket or rekindling lost faith in life, loving desire in relationships or any innate human desire has become so difficult, farcical and impractical, this collection of jokes ‘Junk: Stories by Kumar Ambuj’ ‘ can be understood very well.
Really, Ambuj surprises not only with the content of the stories in this collection, but also with their genre, craft and language.
“They have no testimony of torture, of cruelty,
But memory is…
in the end they
Tell your tragedies like a story.”
That is the first page of this collection, which comes immediately after his dedication to Vinod Kumar Shukla and Chandrakant Patil. This wonderful collection of prose and stories of his is divided into two sections named Sphatik and Panchatantra. In Sphatik – ‘Missing place’, ‘Joke’, ‘I don’t trust anyone’, ‘Tongue’, ‘Sphatik’, ‘Anyone will eat snails’, ‘Golden Lotus’, Wonders of the World’ , ‘Vastu Bazar’, ‘Pyramids of the Living’ and ‘Temple Crossing’ and in Panchatantra – ‘Anshan Ki Jaag’, ‘Ek Din Tum Kuch Kho Doge’, ‘Like 1970’, ‘Panchtantra’, ‘Ek Aur Jodi’ and Compositions like ‘Swapn Mein Baarish’ keep you hooked for a long time.
Listen to what senior journalist Jai Prakash Pandey said on the collection ‘Majaq: Stories of Kumar Ambuj’ in Book Cafe’s ‘Ek Din Ek Kitab’ programme. This collection of 126 pages has been published by Rajpal & Sons, whose price is Rs.235.
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Rajpal & Sons is the publisher of ‘Majaq: Stories of Kumar Ambuj’. The cost of this collection of 126 pages is Rs.235.
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