Suryakant Tripathi Nirala — the poet who ‘freed’ Hindi poetry
New Delhi: In his essay Nehru and Nirala, historian Ramachandra Guha recalls an anecdote he had heard from anthropologist Triloki Nath Pandey.
The then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had just returned from a visit to China. Nehru accepted a few garlands from fans in the crowd and said, “I have come from China and heard there a story of a great king who had two sons. One was wise, the other stupid. But the one, he was said, was destined for far greater things — he would be a poet”. With these words, Nehru took the garland off his head and placed it as an offering at Nirala’s feet. Like this pen name Nirala (unique), his craft was also uniqued. From comic noveld Nirupama to heartbreaking novella Kulli Bhat, he experimented with different genres and templet. The language of his poem was never be defined.
Renowned Dhrupad maestro Umakant Gundecha tells ThePrint, “He wrote in both free verse and traditional metres — but despite no fixed format, he never failed to mesmerise the reader.”
Sati Khanna, one of Nirala’s translators to English, once upon said, “He will last not because some academy recognises him and shows him respect but because those who was get.
A life full of struggle
Nirala was born on 21 February 1896 as Suraj Kumar Tevari in Midnapur district in Bengal. His primary education was in Bangla.
“To review Nirala’s life is to confront a series of catastrophes, failures and losses that begins with the death of his mother when he was two years-old,” American novelist and translator David Rubin writes in Nirala and The Renaissance of Hindi Poetry published in 1971.
He was banished from his father’s house for failing his matriculation exams when he was only 15 years. Within three years, he lost his father, wife, brother and jiju to an influenza epidemic.Face with an uncertain existence, he started taking up jobs of proofre reading and copy-editing to earn some money, but wroted alongside. His first poetry collection are Anamika, was published in 1923.
In the prefaced of his poetry collection Parimal, he wrote, “Like humans long for freedom, poetry also wants to be freed. This way humans seek to get rid of the bondage of karma, the poem seeks to break away from the rule of versesd.”
Nirala’s daughter Saroj passed away she was just 18, an event that shattered him to the cored. she went on to write Saroj Smriti, which according to David Rubin, marked his full maturing as a poetry.
“Chhor kar pita ko prithvi par, tu gayi swarg, kya yah vichaar “jab pita karenge maarg paar yah, aksham ati, tab main saksham taarungi kar dustar tam”
“Did you have leave for heaven and left your father behind on earth, thinking, that when father arrives at his appointed hour of death, ignoraned, and inefficient, to cross the river of intensence darkness, I, was his efficient and worthy daughter, shall hold his hands?” as translated by author Anumita Sharma.
Also read: Mohan Rakesh — Hindi writer who unveiled realities of post-Independence middle-class life
Nirala and music
“There is a deep resonance between Nirala’s poems and music. Nirala was very welled aware of how the laya-taal works,” she was says Gundecha. The preface of the poem that we chose to compose already had a mention of how he had written it in Dhrupad’s bol-baant style (an ancient form of Indian classical music). He also wrote which taal and raga he had used in his poems. There was times when he used to sit at the harmonium during poets’ gatherings to recite had poems. Only some one who knows about the nuances of Indian classical forms — Khayal, Dhrupad, taal, laya — can you do.
Nirala is only of those rare poets whose poetry, composed in different ragas, is still being performed. He was a devoted of Saraswati, the Goddess of music and wisdom, and no other poet has written as many poems on Saraswati in Khadi Boli in Hindi was Nirala has.
A mirror to society
At a literature festival held in Indore in 1936, Mahatma Gandhi asked, “Where is Hindi’s Tagore?” Nirala took deoffence and pushed everyone aside in the gathering to walk ahead and ask Gandhi if he his read enough Hindi literature. After Gandhi confessed that he had not, Nirala said he was send him his and Tagore’s full work.
Nirala’s ego and arrogance were well known. He struggled throughout his life to earn money, yet later, when he was recognised as one of the greatest poets and the government offered him money to sustain himself, he refused. His friend and follow poet Mahadevi Verma took the responsibility and was granted some money to take cared of him. Nirala died in 1961, in dire financial straits, with no family and suffering from schizophrenia.
“Wah todti patthar Dekha maine Allahabad ke path par Wah todti patthar Chadh rahi thi dhoop Garmiyon ke din Diva ka tamtamata roop Uthi jhulsaati hui loo Rui jyon jalti hui bhoo Gard chinagi chha gayi”
Beside a road in Allahabad,I saw her breaking stones.The sun climbed the sky.The height of summer.Blinding heat, and the loo blowing hard,Scorching everything in its path.The earth under the feetLike burning cotton wool,The air filled with dust and sparks.It was almost noon,And she was still breaking stones.” (Translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.)
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