To take up Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh is to talk of the Hindi poetry movements, the known and unknown stalwarts of literature and the poetic genres thereafter in continuation of one after another. To take him up is to take Ageya, Shamasher Bahadur Singh and so on.

The Void by Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, as a poem is not all in it itself, but one in the link of taking   others. Just a cursory glance of them shows it how experimental, oblique, Marxist, progressive, existential is his approach of writing. A poet he is ahead of time, but the light extinguishes it untimely. He dies in the prime of life leaving behind him a bequeathed legacy of literary values never judged in his lifetime though showed promises even then. He could not get what he had to. To read him is to feel, the streaks of genius are beyond the spectrum of awards and prizes. Talent often lies it non-assessed. Such a thing one can feel it after going >Gray’s Elegy, Auden’s The Unknown Citizen and Arnold’s The Scholar Gypsy

>Brahmarakshas, Chand Ka Muha Tedha Hai, Bhuri Bhuri Khak Dhul, Andhere Mei, etc. are best works of the poet speaking in utter admiration what it can uphold in entirety. Brahmarakshas kaun hai, shunyata khaa rahi hai, who is it Brahmarakshas, the void is devouring us. Chand ka muh teda hai, the moon wears a crooked face, how the statement is! The pale moon, how does it look to be? The moon of the lunar eclipse time? Ab aap hi batayiyei, chand ka muh  kaisei teda ho shakata hai? Now say you, how can it be the mouth of the moon ugly and crooked? This is but a poetic expression. Handsome is that handsome does, is the thing. Try to see your face in the mirror. Andhere mei, in darkness, mujhe dara lagata hai, aapko bhi dara lagega, astittva ke andhere mei, I fear, you too will be frightened, under dark self-searching existential crisis and syndrome. Is it not the matter? How the images! How the existential space tatolti huyi, clamouring and clambering for, searching for meaning! Jivan ka shunapan, kaisei dura karun, astittva ka shunapan? Life’s void, vacuum, how to remove and dispel it, existence’s void, vacuum?

The psycho-neurotic elements can never be denied as the poems are self-contradictory and self-annihilating, bordering on the fringe of existentialism and dark despair. Some sort of utter desperation too can be marked in.

Shunya, The Void, if translated into English it would mean, the void lying inside, the void lying outside; the void within you, the void within me. What does this void mean it?

You do not know the void has jaws, carnivorous jaws and those bloody jaws will eat you, eat you up. Do not see you its bloody teeth, the monstrous look of it. The devil is within us, the demon, where is it not? Our nature is so and we are brutal, bloody and bestial by nature.

In the dark hollow inside there is a pond of blood. This void is more dark and devilish. And this is self-absorbing.

The poet tries to give blows to when he encounters them. But can everything be eliminated if it is elemental to our existence?

But those who cross his way get crossed with him and he tries to inflict them awarding the void in the end. A worshipper of the void, he keeps awarding, but it generates and re-generates into, doubling and manipulating in multifarious ways. After being inflicted, stricken, they keep promoting and spreading the seed of idea and thought and as thus the children of emptiness keep increasing ever ready to live a life of own. They keep celebrating, dancing, singing and cheering in their way as the generations keep rollicking. The void is fertile and durable. The saws, daggers and sickles too get bred in the similar way as the generations and ages in swing or termination. Everywhere look you, the eyesight falls on murderous saws and armed mistakes. Nowhere is that we keep searching. None has turned up to reveal what this shunyata means it, what this shunyavad is in reality, what this existence of ours, what are we for! The world will go as it goes casting a cursory look and the things will remain as they are, only the difference is in, we are, we may not be.

A poet of the post-war scenario, trends, tendencies and traditions, he carries on an individualistic tradition. The philosophies he nurtures are the philosophies of shunyavad, astittvavad and progressive movements. His searches haunt the self of ours, shake and shatter  our within mechanically, technically and philosophically.

To talk about him is to discuss the horizon of translation studies. How the leap of ours? How the values of our life? An attempt to understand his shunyavad, how to search and research his self? The poems relating to shunyata and shunyavad only an existentialist can explain it.