Mohan Rana (Hindi: मोहन राणा) is a Hindi language poet from India. He has written six poetry books.
Biography
Mohan Rana was born in Delhi, India. He completed his graduate degree from Delhi University. His poetry work has been appreciated by poets. He uses techniques of free association and improvisation in his writing. The poet and critic, Nandkishore Acharya, has written that, 'Amongst the new generation of Hindi poets, the poetry of Mohan Rana stands alone; it defies any categorisation. However, its refusal to fit any ideology doesn't mean that Mohan Rana's poetry shies away from thinking - but that it knows the difference between thinking in verse and thinking about poetry. For Mohan Rana the poetic process in itself is also thought process.' Examples of his style of writing poetry are in these fifteen poems, translated from Hindi by Lucy Rosenstein and Bernard O'Donoghue.
A standard shirt
After midnight
Another word for it
As the past approaches
Did you hear it too?
In your own words
Not what the words...
The blue-eyed blackbird
The colour of water
The evening news and the roof of the world
The morning post
The photograph
The poet's fate
The washerman
To the lost children
(Translations from Hindi)
Rain falling, day after day,
as if trying to clean off
our permanent stains,
but all it does is discolour
...
My home grew wizened on its Vivid Bharati
Its highs and lows, the fluctuating waves
Its knob has forsaken us in our last whitewash
Cells heated in the sun turn silent by nightfall
...
As the past approached,
the future, even when you've lived it,
remains to be seen.
...
They said: Don't go to the end of the Earth
because your lengthening shadow will frighten you.
There it is the world of winged pythons;
the earth there is ablaze with the fire they spit.
...
I saw the stars far off -
as far as I from them:
in this moment I saw them -
in moments of the twinkling past.
...