Archive · 22 Aug 2026
Udayan Vajpeyi on Literature, Science, Memory and the Eternal
Udayan Vajpeyi is a Hindi writer, poet, translator and teacher.
He says words helped him understand the world from childhood.
A poem he heard when he was 18 made him decide to become a writer.
He believes writing can bring memories and lost loved ones back in new forms.
Teaching medicine showed him how vulnerable and mortal people are.
He thinks science changes as new discoveries are made, while literature keeps asking lasting questions about being human.
Translation helped him see Hindi from many different viewpoints.
He says good readers need curiosity and careful attention.
He also believes books encourage slower, deeper thinking than digital reading.
Udayan Vajpeyi describes writing as a way to understand experience and bring the dead back through words.
He says his medical training and more than four decades teaching physiology deepened his awareness of suffering, mortality and human vulnerability.
Vajpeyi sees science as transitory in its truths, while literature searches for what is eternal and universal in human beings.
He argues that translation transforms a writer’s relationship with their own language and requires inhabiting two writers at once.
He criticizes hurried digital reading and identity-based literary politics while defending curiosity, attention and artistic freedom.
- Who
- Udayan Vajpeyi, a Hindi poet, fiction writer, essayist, translator, editor and former physiology teacher.
- What
- In a Scroll interview, Vajpeyi discussed his writing, reading, translation, teaching, literary influences and views on language, art and criticism.
- When
- The interview’s publication date is not specified in the provided article.
- Where
- The conversation concerns Vajpeyi’s literary life in India, including his work at Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal.
- Why
- He reflects on how literature, medicine, memory, translation and artistic practice have shaped his understanding of human experience.
- Profession
- Poet, fiction writer, essayist, translator, editor and physiology teacher
- Language
- Hindi
- Medical career
- More than four decades teaching physiology at Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal
- Recent translation
- His novel Qayas was translated into English by Poonam Saxena as Love Is Participation in Eternity
- Major translations
- Works by Jorge Luis Borges, Anton Chekhov, Octavio Paz and Shuntaro Tanikawa
- Literary view
- Science’s truths are transitory, while literature searches for the eternal in human beings
- Unfinished work
- He hopes to teach, read, write and translate more, including Tukaram’s abhangs into Hindi