6 verses · ~1 min
दिन में प्रचंड रवि-किरणें मुझको शीतल कर जातीं। पर मधुर ज्योत्स्ना तेरी, हे शशि! है मुझे जलाती॥
संध्या की सुमधुर बेला, सब विहग नीड़ में आते। मेरी आँखों के जीवन, बरबस मुझसे छिन जाते॥
नीरव निशि की गोदी में, बेसुध जगती जब होती। तारों से तुलना करते, मेरी आँखों के मोती॥
झंझा के उत्पातों सा, बढ़ता उन्माद हृदय का। सखि! कोई पता बता दे, मेरे भावुक सहृदय का॥
जब तिमिरावरण हटाकर, ऊषा की लाली आती। मैं तुहिन बिंदु सी उनके, स्वागत-पथ पर बिछ जाती॥
खिलते प्रसून दल, पक्षी कलरव निनाद कर गाते। उनके आगम का मुझको मीठा संदेश सुनाते॥
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
The Gopis Search for Krishna
This exquisite miniature painting captures a poignant moment from the Bhagavata Purana, where the devoted gopis of Vrindavan wander through the moonlit forest in a tender agony of separation, searching desperately for their beloved Krishna. The artist portrays their emotional turmoil with delicate grace, showing them conversing, peering behind dense trees, and pointing toward the pale moon, embodying the ultimate spiritual yearning of the soul seeking the divine. Every brushstroke breathes with the devotion of the Pahari masters, transforming a landscape of verdant trees and blossoming shrubs into a sacred stage of divine love and longing.
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