Hindi versus English

[ad]

Poetry has its many facets, many motives, and many inspirations. We shall deal with them later when we have time. Suffice it to say that poetry, much of the time, is an expression that waits to be expressed. It’s like poetry writes itself through you – you are just the vehicle. Much like the Muse does the writing through the pen of the poet.

There can be many disputes about what can be the right language for poetry. Even today, the first day of this website, I had something of a debate with a friend regarding the language to be used. To speak for others is a foolish venture; one can only speak for oneself. And often times I have felt that there is a certain deficiency when I write a couple of things in English. Of course my knowledge of English being much better, I am in a better position to express myself. But there are things that are not translatable. You lose some meaning when you do that. And so, Hindi has inspired me at times. This website is a bi- or tri-lingual effort at creation of poetry (considering whether you consider Hindi and Urdu as two different languages or only one language) to overcome that lacuna that I felt there was with certain ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions’.

Of course, there is the problem of transliteration – since I am not conversant with the use of Indic scripts, I have to make do with Roman script. It is inevitable that the twenty-six letters are quite incapable to reproducing the vast array of Hindi and Urdu sounds – and that is something I have to live with. You comments are most welcome.

[ad]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *