5 verses · ~1 min
हठीले मेरे भोले पथिक! किधर जाते हो आकस्मात। अरे क्षण भर रुक जाओ यहाँ, सोच तो लो आगे की बात॥
यहाँ के घात और प्रतिघात, तुम्हारा सरस हृदय सुकुमार। सहेगा कैसे? बोलो पथिक! सदा जिसने पाया है प्यार॥
जहाँ पद-पद पर बाधा खड़ी, निराशा का पहिरे परिधान। लांछना डरवाएगी वहाँ, हाथ में लेकर कठिन कृपाण॥
चलेगी अपवादों की लूह, झुलस जावेगा कोमल गात। विकलता के पलने में झूल, बिताओगे आँखों में रात॥
विदा होगी जीवन की शांति, मिलेगी चिर-सहचरी अशांति। भूल मत जाओ मेरे पथिक, भुलावा देती तुमको भ्रांति॥
इति
The Poet
सुभद्राकुमारी चौहान
Subhadra Kumari Chauhan
1904 · 1948
There is a moment in every liberation movement when the struggle finds the poem that becomes its most essential utterance, not because the poem is merely rhetorical, but because it crystallizes an emotion so precisely that an entire people recognize themselves inside it. Subhadra Kumari Chauhan provided such a moment with Jhansi Ki Rani, her electric account of the warrior queen of Jhansi. This poem was so concentrated in its energy and so clear in its moral architecture that generations of Indian schoolchildren have carried it inside them as something closer to memory than memorization. But to reduce Chauhan to a single poem would be a severe literary injustice. She was an active participant in the independence movement who walked the path of satyagraha herself, becoming one of the first women to be imprisoned for civil disobedience. She was a poet of domestic tenderness, exploring childhood and the complex inner life of Indian women that formal literature had largely chosen to ignore. Born in 1904, she died in a road accident in 1948 too soon and too abruptly. Her voice remained fully alive and deeply necessary. She gave the warrior women of Indian mythology a voice, and in doing so, she became one herself.
Paired Painting
Draupadi and Simhika
In this evocative work, Raja Ravi Varma captures a profound moment of trepidation from the Mahabharata. Draupadi, the dignified heroine of the epic, is depicted navigating the dense, shadowed forests of the Kamyaka. She is accompanied by the rakshasi Simhika, who disguised herself as a lady in waiting to deceive her. The artist portrays the contrast between the guileful serenity of the deceiver and the genuine, wide eyed anxiety of Draupadi, whose intuition senses the impending peril. Through his signature synthesis of European oil techniques and Indian storytelling, Varma breathes life into the texture of the saris and the nervous tension within the jungle foliage, reminding us that even the most divine figures must confront the dangers of the unknown.
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