2 verses · ~1 min
हम कहते हैं बुरा न मानो, यौवन मधुर सुनहली छाया। सपना है, जादू है, छल है ऐसा पानी पर बनती-मिटती रेखा-सा, मिट-मिटकर दुनियाँ देखे रोज़ तमाशा। यह गुदगुदी, यही बीमारी, मन हुलसावे, छीजे काया। हम कहते हैं बुरा न मानो, यौवन मधुर सुनहली छाया। वह आया आँखों में, दिल में, छुपकर, वह आया सपने में, मन में, उठकर, वह आया साँसों में से रुक-रुककर। हो न पुरानी, नई उठे फिर कैसी कठिन मोहनी माया! हम कहते हैं बुरा न मानो, यौवन मधुर सुनहली छाया।
रचनाकाल: खण्डवा-१९४०
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
A Parsee Girl
Pestonji Bomanjee stands as one of the luminaries of nineteenth century Indian art, bridging traditional Indian subjects with the rigorous discipline of European academic realism. In A Parsee Girl, painted in Bombay in 1887, the artist captures a tender yet striking moment of a young Parsi girl engaged with art or imagery, dressed in exquisitely detailed traditional attire adorned with rich embroidery. Her delicate expression is rendered with a profound empathy that transcends mere portraiture, offering a rare and intimate glimpse into the identity and cultural grace of the Zoroastrian community during a time of great shifting paradigms in the subcontinent. Every brushstroke reveals Bomanjee's mastery over light and shadow, illuminating the subtle textures of fabric and the gentle gaze of youth, ensuring the canvas remains a cherished window into a bygone era of Indian portraiture.
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