Editor’s Note: Narendra Modi is widely known for his debating skills and oratorio talents with which he has won several elections in his long political career. But occasionally the prime minister also shares his poetry on social media. He is in fact a published poet, and his collection of poems A Journey: Poems by Narendra Modi published in 2014, it addresses the same themes that we find in his political campaigns – such as those of Hinduism and nationalism. Beyond that, the book also offers a rare glimpse of the Prime Minister’s connection to nature and his insights into love, hope and disaster. It was originally written in Gujarati by him and later translated into English by Ravi Mantha. On his 70th birthday, here are some of the Prime Minister’s poems for you to read:
Ode to love
The moment I became aware of you
In the serene Himalayan forest of my mind
A wildfire started, in furious seriousness.
When I saw you
A full moon rose in my mind’s eye
The smell of sandalwood, of a tree in full bloom.
And when we finally met,
Every pore of my being was filled with scent
not to compare.
Our separation has melted the tops of my joy.
The smell turned to scorching heat
That burns my body, reduces my dreams to ashes.
The full moon sits on the far shore
Relentlessly cold, staring at my plight.
Without your tender presence
On the ship of my life
I have no captain, no rudder.
calamity
The river, once graceful, a girl in her early childhood
Is a growling lioness today.
In abundance, she swings in brutality
Lose her inhibitions, pour out her anger
Sweep everything in her path.
This river, when calm, a gentle life-giver,
Does she not see her own destructive power?
Whole villages were washed away in her fervor
Bodies of the drowned floating downstream
Exhaled breath in one last scream
This force of nature, a destructive memory
To the man who tries to mold her.
She has the last word.
Proud, as a Hindu
I feel proud as a human being, as a Hindu.
When it wells up, I feel vast, an ocean
My faith is not at the expense of someone else’s
It contributes to the comfort of my fellow man.
I only like the company of that man
Who is filled with the warmth of devotion?
Where the waters of the Narmada flow like life’s blood,
I am a dewdrop on a flower.
I feel proud as a human being, as a Hindu.
Even though the eye seems small
His eyesight is indeed huge
One religious sect is not my street
Diverse my learning school
Countless suns, clouds, planets, galaxies, in my sky,
I am only a moon.
I feel proud as a human being, as a Hindu.
kargil
I remember the innocence of Kargil
In an earlier time I had seen
Tiger Hill as just another peak
In that time
The white loneliness of the great mountain king
I had sucked in to my heart’s desire.
But today
Each of the snowy peaks
Roar, with echoes of the bombs, the cannons.
On this slate of ice,
Like hot and burning coals
I saw our soldiers, our men.
Here, every soldier
was a farmer
Sowing his own seed today
And irrigate with blood.
So that our tomorrow
Does not wilt.
I saw in the eyes of the soldiers
Rise from the fog
Hundred crore dreams
Their own lashes like strings
Holding tight to the God of Death
In their minds I saw our brave men
I felt the presence of Yamraj[1]
Lying on the floor, kissing the feet
From our brave.
The scorching heat of their courage
Melt the ice, into a cool mountain spring
And in the spring flows along the peaks
I heard the clear tones of a tune.
sujalam
suphalam
Malayajasheethalam
And from the womb of that spring
Sasyasyamalam
I felt the true meaning of the song,
Vande Mataram.
The following poems are published with permission from Rupa Publications.
