9 verses · ~1 min
क्यों मुझे तुम खींच लाये?
एक गो-पद था, भला था, कब किसी के काम का था? क्षुद्ध तरलाई गरीबिन अरे कहाँ उलीच लाये?
एक पौधा था, पहाड़ी पत्थरों में खेलता था, जिये कैसे, जब उखाड़ा गो अमृत से सींच लाये!
एक पत्थर बेगढ़-सा पड़ा था जग-ओट लेकर, उसे और नगण्य दिखलाने, नगर-रव बीच लाये?
एक वन्ध्या गाय थी हो मस्त बन में घूमती थी, उसे प्रिय! किस स्वाद से सिंगार वध-गृह बीच लाये?
एक बनमानुष, बनों में, कन्दरों में, जी रहा था; उसे बलि करने कहाँ तुम, ऐ उदार दधीच लाये?
जहाँ कोमलतर, मधुरतम वस्तुएँ जी से सजायीं, इस अमर सौन्दर्य में, क्यों कर उठा यह कीच लाये?
चढ़ चुकी है, दूसरे ही देवता पर, युगों पहले, वही बलि निज-देव पर देने दृगों को मींच लाये?
क्यों मुझे तुम खींच लाये?
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
Jatayu Vadham
This profound and emotionally charged chromolithograph immortalizes a heart wrenching episode from the epic Ramayana. The noble demigod vulture, Jatayu, valiantly attempts to rescue Sita from the clutches of the demon king Ravana, sacrificing his physical body in an act of supreme devotion and righteousness. Raja Ravi Varma masterfully captures the instant of tragic violence as Ravana severs the great bird's wing with his gleaming sword. Sita stands beside them, overwhelmed by grief and despair, her face buried in her hands. Through this work, the artist bridges classical Indian narrative with Western academic realism, allowing viewers to viscerally feel the sorrow and drama of the epic encounter.
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