Alok Dhanwa stands as one of the most significant and distinctive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry, bridging the personal and the political with rare emotional depth and intellectual clarity. His work transforms everyday images—kites soaring at dawn, the slow sinking of a red sun, and twilight stretching into long godhūli—into profound meditations on memory, alienation, civilizational decline, and the stubborn human will to resist erasure.
In an era when much Hindi poetry either retreats into private lyricism or hardens into didactic protest, Dhanwa maintains a delicate yet fierce balance. His lines are tender enough to evoke childhood wonder and vast enough to mourn a shared cultural heritage under threat from modernity, market forces, and mechanized solitude. Through poems like Patang, Suryasta, and Safed Raat, he reclaims the unfinished and the almost-lost as sites of dignity and defiance, reminding readers that poetry is not mere decoration but a quiet, persistent act of returning—again and again—to what makes us human.
The poem Suryasta (Sunset) defines the interrelations between aesthetics and the sociology of literature on an entirely original plane. Where his famous poem Kite is a celebration of the energy and activity of morning, Sunset is a profound philosophical journey of time's decline, pause, and return to the distant regions of memory. On the touchstone of aesthetics, this poem is an excellent example of the art of "prolongation." Through images like "sunset for a very long time" and "long twilight," the poet slows down the linear motion of time. This slow pace is an artistic protest against the frenzy of modern life, which does not allow us the leisure to pause and gaze at beauty. Images like "tranquil space" and "the distant bending of an ancient country" lift the poem beyond geographical boundaries into the category of the "sublime," where the relation between nature and man becomes not merely visual but a form of existential awareness.
From the perspective of the sociology of literature, Suryasta is piercing because it marks the crisis of "alienation" that is the gift of the modern capitalist system. The line "in how many ways we are being made solitary/isolated" strikes at the social process where man is being severed from his history, his roots, and his community, turned merely into a "unit." Here, sunset is not merely an astronomical event but a symbol of civilizational decline. The mention of "the memory of a great race/nation" gives the poem a historical and political expanse. It is an invocation of the collective consciousness of an Indian society which colonial and post-colonial periods have tried to push into the darkness of oblivion. It is memory itself that saves the individual from becoming solitary and connects them to a larger era and a "great nation."
When critically evaluating the poem, the philosophy of "incompleteness" emerges as its most vital component. The statement "my works in the world lie incomplete" reflects a social commitment that refuses to surrender to death or finality. This incompleteness is not a source of despair but the foundation of the resolve to return. The proclamation "I will return again and again" proves that for the poet, sunset is not an end but a long twilight in which he is preparing the account of his actions and memories. By pointing toward "the rare nests of vast birds," the poet hints toward an environment and a vanishing grandeur, making the poem relevant in the context of today's ecological crisis.
The dialectic between "the memory of a great nation" and "being made solitary" expresses the greatest cultural and political tragedy of modern man. Solitariness is not a natural event but a deliberate act of marketism and mechanical time that separates man from his tradition. Against this, the poet sets up memory like a shield. On the philosophical plane, this is a struggle between Time and Existence. Time is a cruel force that wants to erase everything, but the poet's realization of his "incomplete works" prevents him from accepting this isolation. As long as works are incomplete, the individual cannot be truly alone because their actions connect them to society and future generations.
In Alok Dhanwa's poetic vision, the sunrise of Kite and the setting sun of Sunset are the two essential stages of life's complete cycle. If Kite is the colorful canvas of human enthusiasm, then Sunset is the slow music of maturity and civilizational responsibility. The confluence of these two poems suggests that human existence resides not only in the present but in the memories that connect us to tomorrow. Where Kite teaches courage through softness and flexibility, Sunset gives patience to recognize one's roots in the face of infinity.
Emerging from Dhanwa's world of "dream and memory" to the works of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh and Sudama Pandey "Dhoomil," the aesthetics of Hindi poetry shift toward the rocky ground of reality. The biggest difference between Muktibodh's In the Darkness and Dhanwa's poetry is the "nature of experience." Where Dhanwa seeks possibility by making "the sky soft," Muktibodh takes us into a dark room where the search for identity becomes a terrifying struggle. Muktibodh’s images use fantasy to project a mental state, appearing distorted and fragmented to reveal the terrible truths of history and politics. Dhanwa’s images, by contrast, are "direct" and "sensory," functioning like an objective correlative to express internal emotions like enthusiasm or novelty.
Reaching Dhoomil, the discussion moves toward "disillusionment with democracy." In poems like Script or Mochiram, Dhoomil tears apart the system that Dhanwa describes as "the power that makes solitary." Dhoomil’s language is aggressive, treating "iron" not as a symbol of beauty but as the cold machinery of parliament. While Dhanwa’s child spins the earth by flying a kite, Dhoomil’s man is being crushed between "bread" and "parliament." Despite these differences, all three poets center on "man," using softness, complexity, and aggressiveness to protect human dignity against various forms of oppression.
When we place Suryasta on the touchstone of Muktibodh's self-struggle, a subtle ideological plane emerges. For Muktibodh, self-struggle is the tension between the inner ideal and the outer truth, often leading to "self-exile." In Dhanwa, the struggle is a quiet war between solitariness and commitment. Where Muktibodh fights the darkness within, Dhanwa fights the external void that wants to take him away from his "great nation." While Muktibodh’s struggle produces fragmentation, Dhanwa’s produces concentration, allowing him to return to memory with full power.
The dialogue between Dhanwa and Dhoomil connects the poles of "historical melancholy" and "political bitterness." Dhoomil’s bitterness is systemic; he treats poetry as "the court proceedings of words." Dhanwa’s melancholy is civilizational—a dignified beauty like the last rays of a red sun touching history. Dhoomil makes us stand against the system, while Dhanwa makes us serious before history. Both poets suggest that if we save our cultural memory, the conspiracies of time cannot erase us.
Reading Dhanwa's Sunset alongside Rajendra Prasad Singh’s Priya Avlamb! (Dear Support!) reveals another unique bridge in Hindi literature. Singh writes: "this image of evening / is bigger than morning," overturning traditional conventions that prioritize the "rise." Here, the vastness of evening is a symbol of the density of experience. Singh connects sunset to personal and social support, suggesting that we often recognize the importance of a person only when we fear losing them. While Dhanwa sees sunset as the "decline of history," Singh sees it as the "ripening of experience." Both establish that decline is not merely an end but a moment of profound self-awareness.
This modern sensibility differs sharply from classical Sanskrit and English traditions. In Sanskrit literature, poets like Magha and Kalidasa viewed sunset as a "hermit’s evening worship" or a symbol of the transience of life. Magha famously imagined the sky as a vast elephant with the sun and moon as two hanging bells: ghaṇṭīdvayamiva lagne vyomadantiprakāśāt. Kalidasa connected the sun's cycle to the human condition, teaching the world about the inevitability of change. In English poetry, William Wordsworth’s It is a beauteous evening, calm and free sees sunset through "pantheism," comparing the quiet time to a nun breathless with adoration.
While these classical traditions focus on spiritual peace or divine order, modern Hindi poets like Dhanwa and Singh infuse the image with human labor and class struggle. For Wordsworth, sunset connects man to God; for Dhanwa, it reminds him of "incomplete social duties." The technical structures also differ; where Thomas Gray used iambic pentameter to depict nature's organized rhythm, Dhanwa uses free verse and a "fragmented structure" to depict the scattered thoughts and memories of modern life.
In conclusion, the works of Muktibodh, Dhoomil, Singh, and Dhanwa construct a map of modern life’s contradictions. Alok Dhanwa’s Sunset stands as a "fixed point" in this discussion. If Muktibodh compels us to turn inward and Dhoomil makes us stand on the road against the system, Dhanwa provides the historical continuity without which neither self-realization nor systemic change is possible. Saving the memory of a great nation is the only path that prevents us from becoming mechanical.
Dhanwa’s poems teach us that life’s beginning should be found in enthusiasm and its end in commitment. The realization that much remains to be done—the "incomplete works"—frees us from the fear of death and provides the zest to return again and again. Poetry is not merely an arrangement of words but a way of living that gives us the power to seek meaning even as the sun slowly sets. That long twilight is the interval in which we prepare for our next morning, standing with our history and our works as shields against a world that seeks to make us alone.
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*Professor & Former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original article
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