7 verses · ~1 min
जब मैं आँगन में पहुँची, पूजा का थाल सजाए। शिवजी की तरह दिखे वे, बैठे थे ध्यान लगाए॥
जिन चरणों के पूजन को यह हृदय विकल हो जाता। मैं समझ न पाई, वह भी है किसका ध्यान लगाता?
मैं सन्मुख ही जा बैठी, कुछ चिंतित सी घबराई। यह किसके आराधक हैं, मन में व्याकुलता छाई॥
मैं इन्हें पूजती निशि-दिन, ये किसका ध्यान लगाते? हे विधि! कैसी छलना है, हैं कैसे दृश्य दिखाते??
टूटी समाधि इतने ही में, नेत्र उन्होंने खोले। लख मुझे सामने हँस कर मीठे स्वर में वे बोले॥
फल गई साधना मेरी, तुम आईं आज यहाँ पर। उनकी मंजुल-छाया में भ्रम रहता भला कहाँ पर॥
अपनी भूलों पर मन यह जाने कितना पछताया। संकोच सहित चरणों पर, जो कुछ था वही चढ़ाया॥
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
Vishnu Puja
In this serene composition by the master academic painter Mahadev Vishwanath Dhurandhar, a devoted woman is captured in the quiet intimacy of worship before a sacred shrine of Lord Vishnu. Bathed in the soft, flickering glow of oil lamps and the gentle curl of ascending incense, her posture is one of complete surrender and profound yearning. Her hands are joined in anjali mudra, while her tanpura rests beside her, suggesting that her devotion is expressed not only through ritual offerings, but also through the soulful singing of bhajans. Dhurandhar masterfully bridges classical Indian iconography with Western academic realism, rendering the divine form of Vishnu with glowing ornaments and a four armed celestial grace, while grounding the human devotee in tangible, emotional reality.
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