Peri Ravikumar delivers a talk on ‘Meghaduta’ in Visakhapatnam. Also seen are Vruddhula Kalyana Ramarao and Malayavasini.
Immortal Sanskrit classic Meghaduta of Kalidasa enjoys a stellar place in the firmament of literature. Distinct in its own right on several counts of poetic excellence, it stands out not just as an exceptional romantic composition but as social document as well. Though short in its thematic expanse, it spreads a wide canvas of emotive human mind wedged between pathos and passion and nature around in its exquisite shades of beauty and grandeur. In a literary talk on this classic Sanskrit scholar Peri Ravikumar underscored its diverse shades of poetic charms at Public Library Visakapatnam.
Meghaduta – cloud messenger, is essentially a lyric verse composed in Mandakranta meter that has swan like sway in its cadence. This inherent beauty of meter further enhanced expressional beauty of the work. This is a work with two parts Purvamegha and Uttaramegha and two parts are distinct in their tone, texture and stance.
The story line is simple. A Yaksha, a subject of Kubera, the celestial treasurer, was found neglecting his duties as he was preoccupied with thoughts of his wife. he is therefore banished for a year into earthly wilderness. Terribly distressed Yeksha lives through the hard days of estrangement at Ramagiri pining for his wife and she is no different at her abode in Alakapuri in the Himalayan region. Then on the first day of Aashada month, monsoon arrives and Yaksha requests a passing rain laden dark cloud to convey his message to his wife at Alakapuri.
Then Yaksha’s description of the route that the cloud should take in northward direction as shown by Kalidasa is the route of monsoon. The journey of the cloud as it travels thought regions of Amarkoot hill and then touches mount Vindhya where rivers Reva and Narmada courses through, gives minute details of attendant gorgeous nature and its diversity . Kalidasa was a minute and accurate observer of nature. The descriptions of “towering summits of Himalayas decked with diadems of snow, peaks of Kailash reflected in the waters of rivers, the rippling Ganges , the musky breezes sending forth their balmy scent , the wilds where eager hunters roam tracking the lions, the magic herbs that stream their light through mossy caverns of darksome night” --- show the poet’s familiarity with the Himalayan region.
Peri comments on how Kalidasa portrays an immortal and complex character as the cloud in the form of an intelligent messenger without even naming it —a character parking the attributes of both animate and inanimate objects. He keeps up this character with remarkable exactness in minute detail. The poet takes a flight of imagination and ends the journey in all that is beautiful, glorious, tender and sweet.
The literary forum Sahitya Surabhi hosted the event.
