ShringaraAdvanced

साँस के प्रश्नचिन्हों, लिखी स्वर-कथा

Saans Ke Prashnachinhon, Likhi Svara-Katha

2 min read 7 versesMoon Flute

7 verses · ~2 min

साँस के प्रश्न-चिन्हों, लिखी स्वर-कथा क्या व्यथा में घुली, बावली हो गई! तारकों से मिली, चन्द्र को चूमती दूधिया चाँदनी साँवली हो गई!

खेल खेली खुली, मंजरी से मिली यों कली बेकली की छटा हो गई वृक्ष की बाँह से छाँह आई उतर खेलते फूल पर वह घटा हो गई।

वृत्त लड़ियाँ बना, वे चटकती हुई खूब चिड़ियाँ चली, शीश पै छा गई वे बिना रूप वाली, रसीली, शुभा नन्दिता, वन्दिता, वायु को भा गई।

चूँ चहक चुपचपाई फुदक फूल पर क्या कहा वृक्ष ने, ये समा क्यों गई बोलती वृन्त पर ये कहाँ सो गई चुप रहीं तो भला प्यार को पा गई।

वह कहाँ बज उठी श्याम की बाँसुरी बोल के झूलने झूल लहरा उठी वह गगन, यह पवन, यह जलन, यह मिलन नेह की डाल से रागिनी गा उठी! ये शिखर, ये अँगुलियाँ उठीं भूमि की

क्या हुआ, किसलिए तिलमिलाने लगी साँस क्यों आस से सुर मिलाने लगी प्यास क्यों त्रास से दूर जाने लगी।

शीष के ये खिले वृन्द मकरन्द के लो चढ़ायें नगाधीश के नाथ को द्रुत उठायें, चलायें, चढ़ायें, मगन हाथ में हाथ ले, माथ पर माथ को।

इति

Rasa: Shringara
Stanzas: 7
Lines: 28
Reading time: ~2 min
Form: Geet (lyric song)
Metre: geet
Rhyme: irregular

The poem evokes a romantic and devotional atmosphere of shringara, depicting a luminescent, dreamlike landscape bathed in milky moonlight where the boundaries between nature and the divine dissolve. The scene presents a lush, nocturnal woodland where a flute’s melody resonates through the air, causing flowers, trees, and birds to mirror the speaker’s own yearning, while ethereal personifications of the wind and moonlight caress the trembling blossoms. This imagery weaves a narrative of deep longing and spiritual surrender, shifting from the delicate, breath-like questions of a lovelorn soul to a climactic union with the divine, symbolized by the offering of floral nectar to the peaks of the Himalayas. The overall artistic tone is one of transcendent ecstasy and serene longing, capturing a moment where the physical world vibrates with the intensity of love and the haunting, unreachable sweetness of a celestial song.

साँस के प्रश्नचिन्हों, लिखी स्वर-कथा (Saans Ke Prashnachinhon, Likhi Svara-Katha), by Makhanlal Chaturvedi runs to 28 lines across 7 stanzas, set as Six stanzas of four lines each with a concluding couplet. Its governing rasa is Shringara, shaded by Karuna. The metre is geet. Rhyme falls as irregular.

It belongs to the 1889 · 1968 span of Makhanlal Chaturvedi's working life, and keeps the plain, spoken register that period is known for.

Read it for साँसों की व्याकुलता और प्रेम की रागिनी and प्रकृति के तत्वों में प्रियतम की बाँसुरी का स्वर खोजना. 3 words in it carry older or regional senses, so the poem rewards a second pass.

The verse is hung beside Spring in Kulu: Bathed in an atmosphere of otherworldly stillness and profound spiritual devotion, the scene captures the mystical awakening of the Himalayan spring. A solitary figure sits in tranquil meditation beneath a blossoming…

Words worth pausing on

मंजरी: फूलों का गुच्छा या बौर
नगाधीश: पर्वतों के राजा अर्थात् हिमालय
मकरन्द: फूलों का रस

Threads

Moon Flute

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.