Thursday, February 21, 2008

Subramania Bharati - The jewel of stars.


I was influenced by poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
This is how he sang of Mother Bharat at the dawn of the independence movement: "She has thirty crores of faces, but her heart is one; she speaks eighteen languages, yet her mind is one"; he is considered to be the father of modern style in Tamil literature so much so that creative writing in Tamil during the last seven decades owes its existence to his revolutionary style of transforming spoken rhythms to a written format; he was one of the foremost poets to compose and sing songs on India as one entity; his powerful prose and poetry emphasized the urgent need for national integration and shun parochial mentality; he envisioned a glorious future for India, a nation united on the common grounds of shared culture and history; and his vision marks the dawn of India's national unity movement during [the] freedom struggle, and was aptly referred to as the national poet - Subramanya Bharati (1882-1921).


The jewel of stars.
Moonlight, the stars and the wind,
By placing them in front
And drinking the honey thereof-
A poetic frenzy seizes us;
That atomic thing called Mind-
We shall let it roam free.
Should one wonder at the bee
that sings While imbedded in a tasty fruit?
Oh, Mind! Go hence to join The jewel of stars.