The poet of the age of deceit: A story of memory, objects and modern anxiety

By Ravi Ranjan* 

Uday Prakash stands as one of contemporary Hindi literature's most significant figures, renowned for his distinctive style, social concerns and sharp satire. His short story "Kapatakala ka kavi" (Poet of the Age of Deceit) appears deceptively simple—the tale of an elderly poet's everyday confusions. Yet beneath this surface lies a profound philosophical narrative exploring the shifting relationships between human beings, time, memory and experience.

The Crisis of Ordinary Objects

The story opens with a trivial incident: the protagonist, Kumar Vikal, reaches for toothpaste instead of shaving cream. This seemingly minor mistake gradually reveals itself as something far more significant—a sign that the world's old rules no longer apply. Objects begin rebelling against their appointed places. Spectacles appear in the refrigerator, medicines hide inside shoes, mobile phones sleep among potatoes, and keys vanish into jacket pockets.

These displacements are not merely comic devices. As memory studies suggest, a human being's world is fashioned not just from objects but from the meanings attached to them. A house is a home because memories dwell there; spectacles are not just vision aids but part of vision's continuity; a key represents trust, security and the possibility of return. When these objects abandon their places, the entire framework of experience begins to crumble.

The Revolt of Things

Prakash's story engages deeply with thing theory and new materialism. Objects here are not passive assistants to human action but active protagonists. They develop independent behavior, devise strategies against the poet and seem to take mischievous pleasure in exhausting him.

This reversal challenges the anthropocentric arrogance that humans are the world's sole masters. As the story progresses, Kumar Vikal moves from attempting to control objects to simply coexisting with them—accepting that the world is larger than human understanding. The poignant midnight scene where he discovers his spectacles and keys outside a zipped bag captures this transformation: instead of anger, he regards them with affectionate weariness.

Power and Surveillance

Kumar Vikal senses an invisible "Big Boss" or "Big Brother" controlling his household. This reference to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four carries a crucial difference—Uday Prakash's power has no fixed face. It operates not through overt dictatorship but through dispersed systems, objects and self-discipline.

The poet begins writing notes on walls and maintaining detailed inventories in his poetry diary. This transformation from creativity to accounting symbolizes a deeper cultural crisis: the replacement of lived experience with documentation. Yet even documents prove ineffective—objects ignore the written records. In this age of deceit, knowledge itself becomes insecure.

The Collapse of Reality

From a postmodern perspective, "Kapatakala ka kavi" describes a world where reality has lost its stability. The story deliberately leaves multiple interpretations open: Are objects genuinely moving? Is Kumar Vikal's memory failing? Is an invisible force orchestrating events? Has reality itself transformed?

This uncertainty reflects Jean Baudrillard's concept of simulacra—the condition where representations become more real than reality itself. Kumar Vikal can no longer determine whether his spectacles belong where they were kept or where they're discovered. The document claiming to represent reality becomes as unreliable as the reality it describes.

Time and the Structure of Feeling

Henri Bergson's philosophy of time illuminates the story's deepest dimension. Real time—duration—flows within consciousness itself. The past never disappears but remains alive within the present. Kumar Vikal's crisis is not just about misplaced objects but about the continuity of a life formed over decades.

Raymond Williams's concept of "structure of feeling" captures the story's cultural sensibility. Nowhere does Prakash explicitly discuss globalization, digital technology or social fragmentation. Yet the entire narrative atmosphere—the anxiety, the instability, the alienation—embodies the diffuse unease of our historical moment.

The Story's Enduring Achievement

"Kapatakala ka kavi" ends with profound compassion. During a second sleep, Kumar Vikal encounters his deceased wife. Past and present merge into a single experience. He expresses hope that "one day the real objects of the world will surely return to their old places."

This is not simply hope for objects to return—it represents faith in the moral power of memory and the ultimate continuity of experience. The story's greatest artistic achievement lies in leaving readers not with a conclusion but with a lasting unease about the nature of reality, memory and the human place in an increasingly unstable world.

In this sense, "Kapatakala ka kavi" transcends its domestic setting to become a profound cultural narrative of our age—an age where institutions, information, technology and power operate according to their own logic, and human beings can no longer fully control their own experience.

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*Professor and former Head (Retd.), Department of Hindi, University of Hyderabad. This is the abridged version of the author's original paper