Cityscaping the Places of Lure: Abhay Kumar’s Cosmic Vision Reflected through Historicity of Monuments

Abstract

History has always been in a state of flux. The historicity of certain documents has been challenged and hagiography of certain people questioned to expose the underlying truth. A truthful representation of the facts and people has always been problematised within an epoch owing to certain social, religious, cultural, political and above all personal factors. Be it a historian, an art critic, a traveller, a chronicler or a litterateur; the polemics has affected all. The writer of a literary text has the liberty to take flights of fancy and sacrifice historicity for the aesthetic beauty. This freedom extends to mingling facts with fiction. With the factual accounts, too, the diction can take any formglorifying, philosophising, condemning, cathartic, enticing or protesting inexhaustible as are the human emotions.

 Abhay Kumar, the writer of monumental poetry,¹ excels in maintaining the aesthetic beauty of monuments and relics, taking care that subtler carvings are depicted through finer use of words. His epigrammatic verse is a trigger to emotive response. His peculiarity lies in reflecting upon the monuments and personages as replicas of human greed for power and immortality that leave a stunning message for the posterity. The paper is a sublime attempt to explore the cityscapes of Delhi and Kathmandu as they come alive and vivid in his poetry.