As a child, I always felt the letter ‘ऋ’ (ri) in the Hindi alphabet was the loneliest because we were taught it stood for just the sagacious word, Rishi, always depicted as an old man with a white beard sitting beneath a tree, eyes closed, and I assumed that this was where the world of ‘ri’ ended.Then, in our matriculation syllabus, came the poem ‘Kanyadaan,’ a mother advising her daughter, “Be a girl, but never look like one.” Rituraj was its poet, and in those hot afternoons in Bharatpur, ‘ri’ came to stand for him. On Monday, that name returned as news. Rituraj is no more.He was born in Bharatpur on Vasant Panchami, the festival that heralds spring, and was fittingly named Rituraj, after the king of seasons. Ironically, the man named after spring spent his life writing in defense of autumn, the falling leaves that drop unnoticed and nobody counts.A stubborn presence for decades, he died on October 26, aged 86, and his silence has settled over the courtyard of Hindi poetry. He lived away from big cities. With an MA in English from Rajasthan University, he taught the language at colleges across Rajasthan for nearly four decades. He taught English in the classroom and wrote in Hindi. Perhaps that passage between two languages became the ground of his poetry.I will die of one thing or another.Of too much happiness,of an easy, effortless end to the journey,or of a stillnessthat has settled deep within me.But I will not dieof the vile manoeuvres of misrule,of the daily, false explanations,or of the unavailabilityof a railway reservation.In one poem, a mother in a poor home, with empty pots and a crying child, tells a visiting sahib:Let him cry.Don’t give him bread or biscuits.He must learn to sleep hungry.You will leave.We have to live our whole lives this way.The famous poet Mangalesh Dabral called Rituraj’s poetry “unburdened by cosmopolitan pressures.” His poems often see the city through the eyes of the Bhil and Muria tribal people. They also see the violence we look at and choose not to see. As one poem asks: “What’s an eye alone? What is seen can be made unseen.”Rather than pity poverty, his poetry recognises the sharp sight hunger teaches. In one poem, the poor have telescopes in their eyes. From afar they spot jamun and dates, dry twigs and cow dung, while a stove smoulders in their bellies. It is a merciless X-ray of a society.The poor have telescopes in their eyes.From afar, they can spotwild berries, jamun and dates.From afar, they knowwhere to find dry wood and cow dung.Inside their stomachs, a smoky stove keeps burning,baking the rotis.Story continues below this adEven his titles are poetic: ‘Pul Par Pani’, ‘Surat Nirat’, ‘Main Angiras’, ‘Nahin Prabodhchandrodaya’, ‘Kitna Thoda Waqt’, ‘Abacus’, ‘Asha Naam Nadi’. They include saint poets, a Vedic sage, Sanskrit drama, and a child’s abacus. Before ‘Prabodhchandrodaya’, an old Sanskrit allegorical play, Rituraj puts a ‘Nahin’, a ‘No’. That ‘no’ defines the temperament of all his work: deep familiarity with tradition, and an equally deep refusal to bow before it.Also Read | Remembering Ryu Murakami, Japan’s literary enfant terrible, who died at 74After voluntary retirement, he spent three years in China as a language expert with China Radio International. Those years gave us his ‘China Diary’.The poet born in spring has left in the fading October sun. Leaves fall, but their rustle stays in the air. So will his poetry. Vasant Panchami will return every year, and his birthday will pass without noise. But the real day to remember Rituraj will be the day another child in some school reads ‘Kanyadaan’ for the first time and learns a new meaning of ‘ri’.