Asad Zaidi is among the best-known contemporary Hindi poets today.
It was pleasant the sun was mild
the breeze gentle a man on foot
could have carried on for miles
without trouble
...
A poem already bad gets even worse.
No mortal effort can improve it.
Effort spoils it even more.
It turns ever murkier –
...
Something was to happen in the seventies but it did not happen.
Strange winds began to blow in the eighties.
And in the nineties what was not to happen, happened.
And so did an entire century take leave
...