{"id":1626,"date":"2024-04-16T17:51:19","date_gmt":"2024-04-16T17:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/?p=1626"},"modified":"2024-04-16T17:53:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T17:53:00","slug":"sudhakar-gaidhani-india-meditation-on-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/2024\/04\/16\/sudhakar-gaidhani-india-meditation-on-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Sudhakar\u00a0 Gaidhani India: MEDITATION ON THE WORLD"},"content":{"rendered":"
Sudhakar\u00a0 Gaidhani<\/div>\n
India<\/div>\n

MEDITATION ON THE WORLD
\n– Om Biyani
\nPicture a rustic-looking student appearing for the M.A.
\nPart I examination and attempting a question on
\nSudhakar Gaidhani’s first collection of poems. The
\nstudents is well, Gaidhani himself. Picture a boy washing
\ndishes in a dingy village eatery who grows up to say :
\nSuppose you pushed the earth on …
\nWhere would you park it in space?
\nThat is our poet.
\n“Devdoot – c’est moi,” says Gaidhani in his language.
\nIncidentally, it seems poetically fit that the creator of
\nDevdoot – which word literally means God’s courier
\n(hence an angel) – should belong to the postal department.
\nThat the experience of hutment life should colour
\nGaidhani’s poem is understandable; what is remarkable is
\nthe way he transcends the usual limitations of the
\nliterature we associate with people of such a background.
\nDevdoot is Gaidhani’s second and favourite work, a
\nlong-gestated long poem whose epic status is tentatively<\/p>\n

conceded by some noted Marathi critics. Its larger-than-
\nlife hero, its breadth, and the nature of the action in it are<\/p>\n

advanced to support the epithet. On the other hand, its
\nreflective nature – reflective more than episodic – has
\nearned it the description “meditations on the world”. But
\nit is not a chapter by chapter disquisition, it is a picaresque
\nmeditation, the link between one thought and next being
\nassociative and underground.
\nUnderlying the poem is the awareness that external
\nnature and human nature are sprung from a common
\nseed. Nature images abound in the poem and its complex<\/p>\n

\u2013 20\u2013<\/p>\n

“message” is at places reduced to a simple appeal to seek
\none’s identity in nature – to be like a flower, like a tree.
\nDevdoot is Buddha and Christ rolled into one, who has
\ncompassion in his bag but who dismisses “defunct
\nprayers”. If the ancient lawgiver has stopped, Man
\nshouldn’t “pitch his tent”.
\nThe poem has, fittingly, the quality of eloquence. The
\noriginal is a cascadingly fluent, eminently recitable free
\nverse poem, punctuated by explosions, interspersed with
\nechoes from folk songs and traditional hymns, parodic,
\nsardonic, witty, aphoristic, blunt. Its one-stretch, 90
\nminute readings (about Canto-I) have enthralled varied
\ncategories of listeners. It is not a cloister poem at all.
\nWithin a short time of its publication, lines from it were
\nread in a legislative assembly, scrawled on village walls,
\nprinted on invitation cards, quoted in college lecture halls,
\nand commended by India’s ex-deputy Prime Minister
\nY. B. Chavan as containing the “wisdom of ages”.
\nThere could be several reasons for the poem’s success,
\nbut a major one must be its mythopoeia nature – the pithy
\nlittle stories about romance, hunger, exploitation, death.
\nIt may be noted in passing that when UNESCO
\nconsidered Devdoot under their programme for
\ntranslations of representative works they found it a
\n“lovely story”. Another curiosity is that the Smithsonian<\/p>\n

Institute, Washington’s discovery of a thirty-million-year-
\nold fossil of a giant bird reminded a critic of Devdoot.<\/p>\n

Devdoot’s characteristics remarkably resemble those of
\nthe real-life giant bird: gigantic size, flying over oceans,
\nliving aeons ago. Raymond T. Rye II of the Smithsonian
\nInstitute, on reading Devdoot, found the coincidence “a
\nrare occasion when science and poetry can meet with such
\nmagnificent blend of serendipity”.
\nThe serious reader will of course be sensitive to the
\npoem’s suggestions and nuances and resolve its<\/p>\n

\u2013 21\u2013<\/p>\n

paradoxes. Coded and cryptic as some lines do sound,
\nreaders avow that they have mined fresh meanings with
\neach reading. After discussion with Gaidhani I feel the
\npoem awaits the patient digger.
\nCompassion is Devdoot’s keynote, played allegro:
\nHurry up, wash these wounds
\nOn the earth’s heart<\/p>\n

Lest it split into two-
\nBecause this planet is all<\/p>\n

That we mortals have got
\nDevdoot somehow assures us that messiahs can never
\nbe an extinct species.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sudhakar\u00a0 Gaidhani India MEDITATION ON THE WORLD – Om Biyani Picture a rustic-looking student appearing for the M.A. Part I examination and attempting a question on Sudhakar Gaidhani’s first collection of poems. The students is well, Gaidhani himself. Picture a boy washing dishes in a dingy village eatery who grows up to say : Suppose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinione"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/migjeni.se\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}