India, Dec. 25 -- Acclaimed Hindi poet Vinod Kumar Shukla died at a Raipur hospital on December 23. It turned into a day of mourning for me, given how he had shaped my life since we met in 2016.

Not many poets are conversationalists; he was. What stood out was his sharp memory. He could recall his travels in minute detail and remember precisely what he felt while writing a particular poem or shaping a character for a novel. One anecdote, he often recalled was his mother telling him that he was born on the day a theatre opened in Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh, his birthplace.

On the canvas of Hindi poetry, Shukla will be known for his linguistic distinctiveness and emotional density. His writings expanded the creative horizon of Hindi poet...