REMEMBERING THE ‘POET’ PM
Thursday evening was a day marked with grief for millions of Indians as we lost our former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee. As the nation mourned him, some chose to remember him through the medium of poetry.
Artist Sangeeta Gupta, with her book, Musavvir ka Khayal, dedicated an evening of poetry and art to the ‘poet Prime Minister’. “I lost my most favourite leader. I think that Atalji became a revered leader because he was also a poet. Art, literature and poetry... they make us more compassionate. Atalji had compassion even for his opponents. He spoke from the heart. A poet will never die because his words will always be there,” she said after the unveiling of the book, which contains ink drawings and handwritten poems. She also recited some of her poems in honour of Vajpayee.
Sharing her thoughts about the artwork in the book, artist Anjolie Ela Menon said, “Most of Tagore’s (Rabindranath Tagore) paintings started with calligraphy. He used to write poems and then illustrate the letters of the poems, and finally, that turned into paintings. I see some of that quality in [Sangeeta’s] book.”
Kuchipudi exponents Raja, Radha and Kaushalya Reddy, and art curator and author Sushma Bahl were among those present at the do.