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PM's poetry catches up with him

A correspondent in New Delhi

Verses that Prime Minister A B Vajpayee penned way back have, ironically, returned to haunt him today.

Vajpayee's Hiroshima Ki Peeda (Pain of Hiroshima), first published in 1995, was reprinted this year as part of Vajpayee's collection of poems, Meri Ikkyavan Kavitayein (my 51 poems). Out of those fiftyone, Archana Khosla, an NSD graduate who produced a ballet on the prime minister's poems, just had to include the one on Hiroshima in her production.

Khosla is no closet Congresswoman, in fact she sets store by the country's new-found strength. However, against the backdrop of the recent nuclear tests conducted by India, the lines from Hiroshima ke Peeda ring with irony.

The poem goes:

Kisi raat ko
Meri neend achaanak uchat jaati hai
Main sochne lagta hoon ki
Jin vaigyanikon ne anu astron ka
Aavishkaar kiya thaa
Ve Hiroshima-Nagasaki ke
Bheeshan narsanhar ke samachar sunkar
Raat ko soye kaise honge?
Kya unhe ek kshan ke liye sahi
Yeh anubhuti hui ki unke hathon jo kuch hua
Accha nahi hua?
Yadi hui, to vakt unhe katghare mein khada nahi karegaa
Kintu yadi nahi hui to itihaas unhe kabhi
Maaf nahi karegaa.

Translated into English, it reads: On some nights, I am suddenly awakened. My eyes open, I start thinking that the scientists who invented nuclear weapons, after hearing the news of the horrific massacre of Hiroshima-Nagasaki, how could they have slept at night? Did they, even for a moment, feel that what happened through their hands, was not good? If they did, then time will not place them in the dock. But if they didn't, then history will never forgive them.

This somehow does not sit well with the prime minister's new-found praise for the scientific community, which he hailed with his jai vigyan statement after the country's successful nuclear tests.

Khosla had been planning the ballet for a while, unaware like the rest of the country of the then imminent blasts. She waited for the prime minister to attend the ballet and, finally, when he couldn't find the time and also since she had to go abroad, she decided to hold the ballet on May 14 -- three days after D-day.

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