Vinod Kumar Shukla (pronounced as शुक्ल), is a man of rare simplicity, valour, and a celebrated writer whose words have a warm way of settling inside your heart. His writing career is a stellar record of short stories, novels and poems spanning over a timeline of half a century. And for a caliber like that, he has been awarded several esteemed awards such as – Sahitya Academy Award, Jnanpith Award, PEN Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature and more. His contribution to Modern Hindi literature has earned him the title of ‘Greatest living writer in Hindi’. 

He began his literary career with the debut work, Lagbhag Jai Hind in 1971. Prior to that, he was an extensive contributor to Hindi literary magazines. Vinod Kumar Shukla, now resides in Raipur, a town based out of Chhattisgarh and invokes the spirit of that city regularly in his work. Apart from being a writer, he also wears the hat of a father, husband and a retired associate professor in agriculture extension at the Indira Gandhi Agricultural University.

Vinod Kumar Shukla’s writing largely moves between two themes. Either, the idea of a ‘common man’ or an average life that tends to elude both microscopic scrutiny and larger literary representation or complete abstraction. Take a look at these lines from his poem ‘To get out of bed in the morning’, ‘If I stay awake all night/sleep won’t come all night’. Furthermore, his writing style has often been categorized as hovering over ‘magic-realism’, an art form wherein elements of fantasy fiction are blended with mundane details of everyday life. 

For instance, his novel ‘Hari Ghaas ki Chhappar wali Jhopadi aur Bouna Pahad’ is set in a school setting. Instead of benches, the children sit on gunnysacks and the shelves of schools are occupied by pigeons. One of my favourite parts of this text is when the teacher tells the students that the lesson of the day is no lesson and to learn this lesson she declares a holiday! This one line alone gives you a glimpse into what kind of writer Vinod Kumar Shukla is. In his world, there is time – time to breathe, time to feel the fullness of an emotion and time to observe the stranger buying vegetables for themselves. 

To expand more on his writing, here’s a list of some of his best acclaimed works : 

1. Naukar ki Kameez – The story of this novel revolves around the life of our protagonist who lives paycheck to paycheck. It captures the humanity and the human that is created through meagre financial circumstances and the quiet dignity of an ordinary man navigating a world of small salaries and big dreams. The mundane days of the protagonist mirror the actuality of life by using the narrative style of magic – realism. The text has been translated to English and is viewed as a masterpiece by this artist. It was later adapted into a film by Mani Kaul too.

2. Deewar mein ek khidki rehti thi – This text was the winner of Sahitya Akademi Award in 1999 and follows the story of a married couple whose house houses only one window. This window is a beacon of hope, imagination and dreams. The writing of the novel is very immersive and gives the reader an experience that they, too, are in that story. There is no discernible plot yet the reader would not be able to stop flipping the pages and that’s the magic of reading Vinod Kumar Shukla. 

3. Sab kuch hona bacha rahega – As the title suggests, the book is an abstract work that takes us through the lives of several people connected together  – a school teacher, his wife, his friends and the town folks. The novel does not aim to reach a particular end but to linger in the process of becoming. It captures the essence of life itself, always in motion and something brewing underneath the ordinaryness of it all. 

4. Neela neela jaisa hai – It’s a collection of twelve short stories written in very Vinod Kumar Shukla style. The elements of domesticity, small town cities, the common man and amidst all of those, the subtle shades of humanity stay the same. It was translated to English by Arvind Mehrotra and Sara Rai and is titled ‘Blue is like blue’. He was awarded the Mathrubhumi Book of Year Award in 2020 for this title. 

5. Khilega to dekhenge – This novel begins with a school teacher landing in an abandoned police station after his school has been destroyed due to very strong winds. We are introduced to other characters such as the school children who dream of seeing the Tropic of Cancer one day, a watchman who believes his toy gun has the power to kill somebody and a shopkeeper who keeps looking for his missing life. Through it all, there’s one thing in common and that is the power of imagination to wade humans through times in their lives. This was translated to English by Satti Khanna which is titled ‘Once it flowers’. 

6. Yasi Rasa Ta – The story is based out of his hometown in Chattisgarh and introduces us to three middle-class siblings Yasi, Rasa and Ta. Their parents get lost and in order to find them these children must lose themselves too. And what begins is a series of ruminations on the sense of the world, what is and what could have been. 

7. Ek Chhupi jagah – This novel traces the adventure of children through forests and mountains in a world where environmental degradation is often and corrosive. Elements of magic-realism add to the plot as it makes one rediscover humanity’s connection to nature and childlike wonder wrapped in philosophy. It has been translated into English titled ‘A Silent place’ by Satti Khanna. 

8. Hari Ghaas ki Chhappar wali Jhopadi aur Bouna Pahad – As mentioned in a paragraph above, this text revolves around children in a school setting and the schoolteacher and his wife who reside in a small hut. Shukla’s writing style is very well understood, at this point. The curiosity of children wanting to climb the mountain, the conversations that turn into lessons or the couple sharing a meal, the whole book feels very wholesome. It has been translated into English titled ‘Moonrise on the’ by Satti Khanna. 

9. Kabhi ke baad abhi – It’s a collection of poetry that was published in 2012. The themes of this collection range on the natural world, tribal lives and neighbourhoods. As the name suggests, there’s a lot of abstraction, absurdity and nitty – gritties of life. It’s about the delicacy of moments, someone arriving and someone leaving. 

10. Atirikt Nahi – This is Shukla’s more recent work, published in 2023. It’s a collection of poetry that dives into themes of god, life, and domestic experiences. There is a recurrent imagery of temples, streets and a sense of urbanness. It also points to the changes in Shukla’s writing as his writing has always inclined towards nature. 

11. Treasurer of Piggy Banks – The prolific translator Arvind Krishna Mehrotra hand picked about seventy – five of Shukla’s poems, from all his works and put together this body of work. It is divided into multiple sub – sections and each section contains poems from the original collection from which it was picked. 

The infamous royalty battle 

A few years ago in March 2022, Vinod Kumar Shukla went live on Facebook requesting his publishers to return the rights of his books. His publishers were Vani Prakashan and Rajkamal, titans of the Hindi publishing industry. Vinod Kumar Shukla claimed that his publishers had betrayed him, by hiding sales figures and denying Shukla the royalty he was owed. 

His publishers were paying him a meagre amount of 14,000 rupees per year for his books. He also exclaimed that e-books of his works were published without his permission. This step by Shukla, shook the internet and brought to light the suspicious and greedy activities that occur in the publishing industry. Fast forward to three years, he received a sum of 30 lakh rupees from Hindi Yugm as royalty. What’s baffling is that Hindi Yugm claims that this is the amount of royalty that was earned in the past six months alone from the text ‘A Window lived in a Wall’. This behaviour is not just common in India, but worldwide. Here is a detailed article about it- https://himalayanwritingretreat.com/vinod-kumar-shukla/.  

Vinod Kumar Shukla’s simplicity must not be confused for a lack of misunderstanding this world. It comes from a place of sheer clarity and peace. As writers, we are often told the more difficult the meaning is for the readers to decode the greater your writing is perceived. Or at least, T.S. Eliot thought so. However, Shukla ji defies all rules. He almost never uses a metaphor and with sharp directness conveys his thoughts. He listens to writing like his muse, following it anywhere it takes him. So much so that his poems and stories often overlap. For instance, the text ‘A Window lived in a Wall’ can be found mirrored in ‘A Poem Lived First in the Novel’. He plays with mystery very well, not in a way that invites the readers to solve that mystery but to follow it with curiosity. 

Vinod Kumar Shukla views writing as an act of immense responsibility. He lives outside the limelight, and pursues the craft for it’s inherent value. For him, literature is not a means of self-expression but of self-erasure, a process where the writer dissolves into the act of creation. It is his central belief that each creation brings it’s own creative process and when the creation is complete the process dies with it too. The writer’s job, here, is to surrender and listen. Perhaps, that is why his writing feels so flowy.

Reading Vinod Kumar Shukla demands patience. He is one of those rare writers whom you can solidly recommend to someone while saying that his work will change your life because it will. His life and creativity stand as a testament to the extraordinary hidden within the ordinary, and to the humility with which he approaches both language and life. Shukla, 88, after winning the Jnanpith Award, says how there are still many stories inside his heart that are yet to be told. It is this unwavering spirit and commitment towards his craft that makes Vinod Kumar Shukla, Vinod Kumar Shukla.