On DifferentTruths.com, Vijayshankar’s powerful poem laments the loss of intellectual depth and reason in a world governed by empty slogans.
Within the haze of history,
a voice has diminished—
a voice that insisted
the human project remains unfinished.
It reminded us
that the true site of civilisation
does not reside in palaces,
nor in the polished glass of markets;
it emerges, instead,
within those open public spheres
where individuals,
through the labour of reason,
listen to one another.
He held
that modernity
is not a closed text,
but an incomplete page—
upon which humanity
is yet to inscribe its sentences.
Yet the world
no longer writes in sentences;
it produces slogans.
In place of reason,
there is the noise of the crowd.
And within this noise,
an aging thinker
departed quietly—
as though,
from a darkened room,
someone had lifted away
the lamp.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
Vijayshankar Chaturvedi is a senior journalist, author, and public intellectual with over three decades in the Indian media. He spent more than a decade on Jansatta’s editorial team and now contributes incisive columns on public policy, international affairs, and socio-political issues to Jansatta, Navbharat Times, ABP News, Samalochan, Jan Chowk, and Hindi Saamana. His recent explorations delve deeply into human consciousness, decision-making processes, and the profound transformation of agency in the AI era.
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Spot on. In place of dialogue we’ve abusive slanging matches, and in place of cool contemplation we’ve sloganeering and noise. The domain of poetry that alchemizes aesthetics and moral concerns has shrunk; we’ve either the loud pontiffs speaking on their readers from the pulpit, as it were, or a decadent clinging to wordiness and aestheticism that degenerates into paraonomasia.