KarunaAdvanced

किसी का दीप निष्ठुर हूँ

Kisi Ka Deep Nishthur Hoon

1 min read 4 versesLamp Death

4 verses · ~1 min

शलभ मैं शपमय वर हूँ! किसी का दीप निष्ठुर हूँ!

ताज है जलती शिखा; चिनगारियाँ शृंगारमाला; ज्वाल अक्षय कोष सी अंगार मेरी रंगशाला; नाश में जीवित किसी की साध सुन्दर हूँ!

नयन में रह किन्तु जलती पुतलियाँ आगार होंगी; प्राण में कैसे बसाऊँ कठिन अग्नि समाधि होगी; फिर कहाँ पालूँ तुझे मैं मृत्यु-मन्दिर हूँ!

हो रहे झर कर दृगों से अग्नि-कण भी क्षार शीतल; पिघलते उर से निकल निश्वास बनते धूम श्यामल; एक ज्वाला के बिना मैं राख का घर हूँ!

इति

Rasa: Karuna
Stanzas: 4
Lines: 17
Reading time: ~1 min
Form: Geet (lyric song)
Metre: geet
Rhyme: irregular

The emotional atmosphere is one of profound, tragic desolation infused with fierce self-sacrifice, capturing the heavy grief of the karuna rasa through a stark meditation on mortality and consumption. A visual realization of this verse would depict a desolate, dark interior where a skeletal figure or a solitary earthen lamp burns with a blinding, relentless flame, crowned by glowing sparks and adorned with a necklace of embers. This harrowing scene symbolizes the agonizing duality of being simultaneously the destroyer and the destroyed—the fatal moth and the unyielding lamp—trapped within a temple of impending death where breathing yields only dark smoke and cooling ash. The overall artistic tone is deeply solemn, sacrificial, and elegiac, evoking a hauntingly serene acceptance of annihilation.

किसी का दीप निष्ठुर हूँ (Kisi Ka Deep Nishthur Hoon), by Mahadevi Varma runs to 17 lines across 4 stanzas, set as Four stanzas of varying lengths. Its governing rasa is Karuna, shaded by Shanta. The metre is geet. Rhyme falls as irregular.

A powerful, intense poem where the poet identifies as both the burning moth and the cruel, consuming lamp.

Read it for विनाश में ही जीवन की सार्थकता खोजना and अग्नि समाधि और राख बनने का गौरव. 3 words in it carry older or regional senses, so the poem rewards a second pass.

The verse is hung beside Harishchandra and Taramati: Bathed in a suffocating atmosphere of profound grief and tragic isolation, King Harishchandra stands watchfully with a staff beside a flickering funeral pyre where Queen Taramati weeps bitterly over the lifeless body of…

Words worth pausing on

शपमय: शाप से भरा हुआ
अंगार: दहकता हुआ कोयला
क्षार: राख या भस्म

Threads

Lamp Death

The Poet

महादेवी वर्मा

Mahadevi Varma

1907 · 1987

Mahadevi Varma stands as the absolute pinnacle of lyrical mysticism in modern Hindi literature. Born in 1907 in Farrukhabad, she was a central pillar of the Chhayavaad romantic movement and is universally revered as the modern Meera for the intense spiritual devotion embedded in her verse. She lived a life of fierce intellectual independence. As the principal of the Prayag Mahila Vidyapeeth, she revolutionized women's education in India, while her literary salon in Allahabad became the epicenter of Hindi letters. Her poetic masterworks, including Yama, Nihar, and Rashmi, are profound meditations on sorrow, the eternal soul, and the quiet strength of the natural world. She did not merely write about pain. She transformed it into a vehicle for spiritual liberation. Honored with the Jnanpith Award in 1982 and the Padma Vibhushan, she passed away in 1987. She remains an immortal figure whose words continue to offer solace to anyone who has ever felt the ache of existential longing.