3 verses · ~1 min
मरा हूँ हजार मरण पाई तब चरण-शरण ।
फैला जो तिमिर जाल कट-कटकर रहा काल, आँसुओं के अंशुमाल, पड़े अमित सिताभरण ।
जल-कलकल-नाद बढ़ा अन्तर्हित हर्ष कढ़ा, विश्व उसी को उमड़ा, हुए चारु-करण सरण ।
इति
The Poet
सूर्यकांत त्रिपाठी "निराला
Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala'
1899 · 1961
Suryakant Tripathi Nirala lived in the permanent condition of the truly original. He was frequently misunderstood by the very world he transformed. Born in Bengal but claiming Hindi as the medium of his revolution, he dismantled the metrical structures of classical Sanskrit based verse. He introduced what he called mukta chhand, or free verse, into a tradition that had never encountered it and was not at first grateful. His life was a sustained encounter with catastrophe. The plague took his wife, daughter, and brother in the same brutal sweep. Poverty pressed against him without mercy, and critical misunderstanding sometimes shaded into deliberate cruelty. Yet from within this suffering, he produced verse of such concentrated and terrible beauty that it reads not as the product of a broken man, but as the testimony of a spirit that had gone through fire and returned with the fire still alive inside it. His epic Ram Ki Shakti Puja remains one of the supreme poems in the Hindi language. It is a profound meditation on doubt, divine abandonment, and the final trembling choice to go on fighting. Nirala was not a comfortable figure, nor was he praised sufficiently in his lifetime. But he was, in the most absolute sense, free. That freedom cost him everything and produced everything. He remains the patron saint of the uncompromising.
Paired Painting
Gajalakshmi
In this transcendent vision painted by the legendary Raja Ravi Varma, the goddess Lakshmi emerges in her divine aspect as Gajalakshmi, the bringer of supreme wealth, royal grace, and boundless fertility. Standing poised upon a luminous pink lotus that floats serenely on the sacred waters, the four-armed deity holds celestial lotuses in her upper hands while granting blessings and showering abundance with her lower hands. Beside her, a majestic white elephant emerges from the tranquil river, joyfully offering a garland of fragrant flowers to honour the mother of the universe. White swans glide peacefully in the gentle current, and distant mountains rise beneath a soft, glowing sky, creating an atmosphere of profound harmony and spiritual awakening. Raja Ravi Varma has masterfully bridged the gap between divine mythology and tangible reality, inviting the viewer into a deeply moving encounter with the eternal grace of the divine feminine.
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