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In the landscape of contemporary Hindi poetry, Swapnil Shrivastava’s presence must be understood not merely as that of an active poet but as a creative bridge between folk sensibility and modern consciousness. At a time when much of contemporary poetry has leaned heavily toward urban experiences, introspective complexities, and ideological abstractions, Shrivastava’s work re‑establishes the folk element as a living cultural structure. His creativity is driven by the conviction that folk elements cannot be artificially imposed on poetry nor turned into tools for ideological agendas; they are only possible to the extent that the poet’s own life is shaped by folk experience.
His first collection, Eeshwar Ek Laathi Hai in 1982, reveals tensions between folk and power, faith and violence, and the ordinary person and institutional authority. In Taakh Par Diyaslaai in 1992, this folk sensibility becomes even more subtle, enabling a critique of broader social structures through small experiences and ordinary objects. In Mujhe Doosri Prithvi Chahiye in 2004, folk experience connects with global human crises—environment, displacement, existence—taking the form of an expansive ethical discourse. By the time of Zindagi Ka Muqadma in 2010 and Jab Tak Hai Jeevan in 2014, his poetry deeply engages with questions of justice, responsibility, and resistance in folk life.
Among his works, the poem “God is a Walking Stick” offers a particularly illuminating entry point into the discourse on ageing. The poem depicts an elderly father’s dependence on a frail, worm‑eaten stick, metaphorically equated with God. The father oils, perfumes, and boasts of this stick, treating it as his third leg, while the son perceives its cracks and infestation, recognizing its hollowness. The final devastating line—“Father still hasn’t realized whose brothel’s walking stick God is”—strips away the illusion of divine support, exposing religion as a fragile crutch rather than a source of genuine strength.
This metaphor resonates with gerontological discourse in world literature, which examines old age from social, cultural, and psychological perspectives. Narrative gerontology views stories of old age as social constructs linking personal experiences to broader social processes. Shrivastava’s father clings to God as a walking stick, a narrative of dependency that connects personal insecurity to social isolation. Foucauldian gerontology reveals how religious discourse functions as an instrument of power, binding the elderly into dependency rather than liberating them.
The metaphor of woodworms crawling into the father’s sleep suggests how doubt infiltrates even the unconscious, corroding faith from within. Derrida’s deconstruction enriches the reading further, showing how the central metaphor establishes binaries of strength and weakness, presence and absence, support and frailty, only to collapse under contradiction. God is present as companion on journeys yet absent as hollow illusion. The final polysemous phrase destabilizes meaning entirely, suggesting transaction, deception, or hiddenness. Thus, the poem deconstructs the very notion of transcendental support, revealing faith as unstable language rather than eternal truth.
Shrivastava’s poem resonates with global literary treatments of ageing. Shakespeare’s King Lear dramatizes an aging king’s desperate dependence on unreliable supports, his daughters’ filial piety. Lear clings to ritual and denial, maintaining a retinue of knights even as his authority collapses. Similarly, Shrivastava’s father oils and perfumes his stick, boasting of its sturdiness despite its cracks. Both figures confront frailty and betrayal: Lear cast into the storm, the father exposed by the son’s knowing gaze. Each text dismantles stereotypes of venerable old age, portraying it instead as ambiguity, suffering, and unreliable supports.
Samuel Beckett’s Endgame offers another parallel. Hamm, blind and paralyzed, depends utterly on his servant Clov, just as Shrivastava’s father depends on his stick or God. Both supports are hollow: Hamm’s authority is illusory, the father’s faith deceptive. Beckett’s absurdist stage images—characters trapped in confinement, routines looping endlessly—mirror the father’s perpetual journeys with his unchanging stick.
Both works refuse redemption, presenting old age as futile attachment to rotting props in a meaningless void. Shrivastava distills Beckett’s theatrical absurdity into lyrical brevity, domesticating existential despair into intimate family irony. Where Lear rages heroically against betrayal and Beckett’s Hamm sinks into absurd repetition, Shrivastava’s father clings quietly to a stick that is already decaying, his faith hollowed by modern skepticism.
In contrast, Shrivastava’s poem “Wrinkles” offers a tender, celebratory view of ageing. The wrinkles of an old woman are described as very beautiful, crafted by time like a painter’s masterpiece. Her eyes speak, her lips move rhythmically, her voice carries unforgettable sweetness. The revelation that she is our mother transforms wrinkles from abstract beauty into intimate familial reverence. This poem overturns conventional views of old age as weakness or decline. Wrinkles, often seen as marks of time’s cruelty, become symbols of artistry and experience.
Ageing is not loss but enrichment, the culmination of a life’s struggles and victories. The mother’s voice embodies vitality that persists, challenging stereotypes of elderly silence or irrelevance. The twist of maternal revelation grounds the poem in cultural respect for mothers. In a world where joint families decline and elders are sometimes marginalized, Shrivastava insists on viewing ageing with love and admiration. Wrinkles are not burdens but roots, connecting generations through memory and affection.
This perspective resonates with Maya Angelou’s On Aging, which adopts a defiant tone, rejecting pity and asserting independence. While Shrivastava celebrates wrinkles as beauty, Angelou demands dignity, insisting that the inner self remains unchanged. Both challenge stereotypes, but Shrivastava’s approach is lyrical and tender, Angelou’s bold and confrontational.
Dylan Thomas’s Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night offers another contrast, urging fierce resistance against death. His villanelle militarizes old age as battle, while Shrivastava serenely aestheticizes it as artistry. Both anchor their poems in parental figures yet diverge in tone: one fiery, the other contemplative. Philip Larkin’s The Old Fools provides a brutal counterpoint, portraying old age as humiliating decay and oblivion. Where Larkin sees absurd denial, Shrivastava sees artistic beauty. The juxtaposition highlights the spectrum of literary responses to ageing, from despair to celebration. Shrivastava’s work thus enters into dialogue with a wide range of traditions, offering Hindi poetry as a vital participant in world literature’s exploration of ageing.
Taken together, Shrivastava’s poems enrich gerontological discourse in Hindi literature. “God is a Walking Stick” exposes the frailty of religious dependency, situating old age within generational conflict and deconstructive instability. “Wrinkles” celebrates maternal ageing as beauty and love, affirming positive ageing narratives. Both poems resist reductive stereotypes, portraying ambiguity, vulnerability, and vitality.
In global context, Shrivastava’s work dialogues with Shakespeare’s tragic grandeur, Beckett’s absurdist nihilism, Angelou’s defiant dignity, Thomas’s raging resistance, and Larkin’s scornful despair. His concise metaphors distill vast themes into intimate domestic images, making Hindi poetry a vital participant in world literature’s exploration of ageing.
Shrivastava neither glorifies nor laments old age. He portrays it as a site of ambiguity, where supports crack, voices sweeten, and wrinkles become masterpieces. His work reminds us that ageing is not merely decline but a complex narrative shaped by culture, family, and belief. In doing so, he enriches both Hindi literature and world discourse, offering readers a vision of ageing that is at once tender, ironic, skeptical, and celebratory, a vision that continues to resonate in a global context where old age is continually reshaped by cultural change and evolving family structures.
Shrivastava’s achievement lies in his ability to take ordinary images—a stick, wrinkles—and transform them into metaphors that speak across cultures, bridging folk sensibility with modern consciousness, and situating Hindi poetry within the universal human confrontation with frailty, faith, and love.
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*Professor, Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad
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