Treasurer of Piggy Banks (Paperback)

As a poet, Vinod Kumar Shukla wishes to retain a meticulous record and also to create a body of knowledge. The subject of this activity is his, and other things’, relationship to the universe, whichever bit of the universe preoccupies Shukla at that moment: a kitchen, a lane, a bus-stop, or a market. A persistent logic characterises the poetry, as well as a language that’s mathematical-scientific in scope, never neglecting the benefits of using tautology (‘The blurred tree was exactly like a tree’) or reiterating the obvious (‘Inside the prison is Nelson Mandela’). Throughout the work glimmers a liberating fact that lies outside the remit of mathematics: the universe and our place in it are unknowable. The poet arrives at no illumination; we do.
One can hardly think of a record in literature that possesses a comparable uniqueness, or of a body of knowledge that’s as indispensable.