Bharat Bhushan Agarwal

Utna Vah Sooraj Hai

(National Prakashan, New Delhi, 1977)

(Sahitya Academy Awardee-Hindi-1978)

"(The late) Sri Bharat Bhushan AgarwaI distinguished Hindi poet and translator, was born at Mathura in 1919. He passed his MA. in English from the University of Agra and joined Samaj Sevak, a Hindi weekly from Calcutta, as its editor. Before joining the Sahitya Akademi as Assistant Secretary (later redesignated Deputy Secretary) in 1960, he served as Programme Officer at All India Radio for 12 years. One of the Tar Saptak pioneers of new poetry in Hindi, he has a number of books to his credit which include eight collections of poetry, two anthologies of his essays, a volume of short stories and a verse-play besides a number of trans­lations from Bengali into Hindi. He was working on the ‘Partition Theme in Indian Fiction’ as Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, at the time of his untimely demise in 1975.

Utna Vah Sooraj Ha; is considered an outstanding contri­bution to Hindi literature for its mature sensibility, subtle irony, deep social concern and relentless self-search." (Citation)

The poems of Utna Vah Sooraj Hai, present the middle class view of contemporary day-to-day life and personal experience of an individual. There are natural contradictions in the poems, but they are not important. In some poems of this collection, the poet feels that life is meaningless and absurd, but it is very clear from some other poems that he loves life. He feels that man is insignificant in comparison to machine, but at the same time, he also feels that he can challenge it. The natural is more beautiful than the machine-made. He accepts the importance of common man. He is against war. He opposes the imposition of English language. In some of his poems, the poet has expressed his loneliness and has depicted the struggles of a lone man. He has the capacity to laugh at himself and at others. He has caricatured revolution, contemporary poets, and the neo-­rich class and its manners" He has written some poems registering his reactions about particular occasions like death of important persons, the birth of Bangladesh, etc.

Twenty-eight poems of Utna Vah Sooraj Ha, are love poems. These poems, depict the deep and intense feelings of love at both the physical, and emotional levels. The poet feels that his beloved is known to him from some previous life. She is fresh, pure, uncanny and unparalleled. She is a flame of fire. What he feels in love is both pleasure and pain. Love is like a flower and a wound In “Ghaw” (The Wound) he says that love is not like a flower that blossoms spontaneously and fills with nectar and falls but is like a lovely wound that is received by falling in a deep pit. In another poem

“Pyar Ek Phool Hai” (Love is flower) he says,

Love is a flower and flower is love We-I and thou-are just two petals of it

The language that binds us is not ours

But flower's

This fragrance will last

When we shall be no more.

The poems of Utna Vah Sooraj Hai are simple and direct in expression and are written in an effective contemporary poetic idiom.

Har Dayal

(Source: Sahitya Academy Awards – Books and Writers – 1955-1978

Published by Sahitya Academy. ISBN 81 7201 014 1)