4 verses · ~1 min
किरनों की शाला बन्द हो गई चुप-चपु अपने घर को चल पड़ी सहस्त्रों हँस-हँस उ ण्ड खेलतीं घुल-मिल होड़ा-होड़ी रोके रंगों वाली छबियाँ? किसका बस!
ये नटखट फिर से सुबह-सुबह आवेंगी पंखनियाँ स्वागत-गीत कि जब गावेंगी। दूबों के आँसू टपक उठेंगे ऐसे हों हर्ष वायु से बेक़ाबू- से जैसे।
कलियाँ हँस देंगी फूलों के स्वर होगा आगन्तुक-दल की आँखों का घर होगा, ऊँचे उठना कलिकाओं का वर होगा नीचे गिरना फूलों का ईश्वर होगा। शाला चमकेगी फिर ब्रह्माण्ड-भवन की खेलेंगी आँख-मिचौनी नटखट मन की।
इनके रूपों में नया रंग-सा होगा सोई दुनिया का स्वपन दंग-सा होगा यह सन्ध्या है, पक्षी चुप्पी साधेंगे किरणों की शाला बन्द हो गई- चुप-चुप।
इति
The Poet
माखनलाल चतुर्वेदी
Makhanlal Chaturvedi
1889 · 1968
There is a poem that lives at the absolute center of the Indian literary imagination of sacrifice a poem in which a flower, offered for worship, instead asks to be pressed into the wreath of a martyr, to fall upon a brave man's chest as he marches into the cannon's mouth. That poem is Pushp Ki Abhilasha The Flower's Longing and its author, Makhanlal Chaturvedi, composed it with the hand of a man who had already offered himself in exactly the same spirit. He was imprisoned multiple times by British colonial authorities for his journalism and his poetry. He was the editor of Prabha, one of the luminous literary political journals of the independence era. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi's very first prize in 1955, and the Padma Bhushan followed. But what no institutional recognition can fully capture is the texture of his moral life the extraordinary combination of burning patriotic fire and absolute personal humility, a man who wrote about martyrdom while quietly being available for it himself. Born in Babai in 1889, he lived to see the independence he had helped dream into existence, and then he wrote on for two decades more, finding in a free India new obligations for the literary conscience. He is the poet of pure sacrifice not sacrifice celebrated from a distance, but sacrifice inhabited, practiced, and offered without expectation of return.
Paired Painting
Shakuntala and her friends
This evocative scene captures a tender moment from the life of Shakuntala, the daughter of the sage Vishwamitra and the apsara Menaka. Drawn from the timeless epic of the Mahabharata, the image shows the maiden in the peaceful hermitage, accompanied by her dear companions Anasuya and Priyamvada. With gentle intimacy, her friends adorn her with garlands, while a small deer watches from the forest edge, symbolizing the deep bond between Shakuntala and the wild creatures of her woodland home. Raja Ravi Varma possessed a profound gift for humanizing these mythic figures, painting them not as distant deities, but as relatable beings filled with grace, emotion, and simple human warmth. Through the medium of the press, he democratized art, allowing the soul of Indian literature to resonate within the hearts of families across the nation.
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