Dil Se: Secrets of the Hindi Poetry Blogger�s Heart

�The best and the most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.� � Helen Keller

The internet and the social media hold the key to building the future that great thinkers like Buddha, Russell, Tagore, Marx and Lennon dreamed of. It has made it possible for thinkers, writers, musicians and artists to share their thoughts and art easily, quickly and widely. The subsequent emergence of regional language interfaces for computers and browsers has been an important breakthrough that allows people across the planet to transcend boundaries without losing their identities. One of the most amazing phenomenons in this sphere has been the evolution of Hindi poetry blogging.

I do believe that there is a line that separates creativity and populism, and at the cost of being branded a snooty conservative, I stick to my belief.

I chanced across Hindi poetry blogging through the Indiblogger network, and it was not out of my personal attraction toward Hindi poetry. I looked up the people who were reading and commenting on my work, and to my surprise, I found several of them were Hindi poets blogging in the Devnagri script. In spite of having learned my Ara, Balia, Chhapra, Darbhangas on the playgrounds of what was then Bihar and growing up with Lot Pot, I still struggle to read Devnagri, and a lot of the lyrical and syntactical devices of Hindi-Urdu poetry are totally lost on me. Yet as I read their work, often sporadically, since much of the time, I would not understand (or even be able to read through) what they were writing, I realized that some of it was at the level of the Prasoon-Joshi-Vishal-Dadlani kind of stuff that no Indian can escape any more. Not surprisingly, much of it was better.

As I got familiar with these blogs, I began to recognize an important trend, and that was how the idea for this post began to form in my mind. I decided to find out more about these bloggers and their fierce determination to change their world, one poem at a time. As our dialog evolved, I came out enriched not only by these poets� incredible work, but also by their commitment to their craft. Join me as they share their journeys.
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