Today is the 84th birth anniversary of the Keats of Hindi, Chandrakunwar Bartwal. Keats and Chandrakunwar, both were poets of beauty and compassion, both loved the nature, both wrote poetry while struggling against tuberculosis, both were born at a time when tuberculosis was incurable.
Both died young — Keats at 25 and Chandrakunwar at 28. The difference between Keats and Chandrakunwar was that where Keats got his beloved, Chandrakunwar was not lucky enough on this front. Keats was born nearly one century before Chandrakunwar. Although Keats and Chandrakunwar both have unlimited height of imagination and both advocated individual liberty, yet poetry of Chandrakunwar goes beyond the horizon of the individual concern to the broader spectrum of concerns the society faced. His poem : Cheaper than the ones made in Japan, Are the toys of lord Macaulay, These are the new toys, Get hundreds for one paisa, These can speak English, can smoke cigarette, can produce children Two of these can multiply into two hundred.'
He was born on August 20, 1919 at Maalkoti village in today's Rudraprayag District of Uttarakhand. He died on September 14, 1947.
Son of Smt Janki Devi and Sh. Bhupal Singh, a teacher, Chandrakunwar did primary from Udamanda, Middle at Nagnath Pokhri, High School from Mesmore High School at Pauri and Intermediate from DAV College, Dehradun. He did BA from Allahabad University and got admission in Ancient Indian History at lucknow University.
But his health started deteriorating and leaving his studies at the midway, he returned to Panwaalia near Bheeri beside Nandakini river. While convalescing, he worked as Principal Agastyamuni High School but could not continue for long. Meanwhile, he remained in touch with Nirala, Yashpal and other litterateurs. In those days the letters took one month to reach lucknow from these hills.
His ill health might had hampered his all activities but for writing poetry. He derived the pleasure from writing poems, poetry seemed to bring him solace when his body pained. Having ceased to flow, The river of my life is returning to its source, My earth is sinking into a small atom, My pleasure is melting through my eyes, It is filling my lips with smile, My life is by and by Dying in this pretty vale, Now the image of 'Shashi' (his heroin) would not emerge in my eyes, The air coming from the woods, Will not bring me the echo of
the spring.
On death, he writes: How stormy is this wind, Blowing the clouds aside, The lightning is crushing the trees, The death is knocking my doors, With laughter Saying what to the Blank and speechless walls.
Chandrakunwar appears to be swimming in the ocean of hope and despair. I was dreaming of my beloved, I was seeing the days of shy and laugh, Where did you come the meanwhile To drop tears on my happiness.
On the solitary bank of my happiness ,Weeps a bride, on hearing her crying, My waves stop suddenly, And then cannot flow further enjoying
Most of his poems Chandrakunwar has written at Paanwalia, a small estate that his father Sh. Bhupal Singh had purchased near his ancestral village at Malkoti. Panwalia is along the same Mandakini river which flows down from Kalimath and Kawiltha village. Kawiltha is considered the birth place of the famous Sanskrit Dramatist and poet Kalidas. Although Chandrakuwnwar himself declares himself to be a follower of Kalidas, the former vies with the latter in symbolism and allegory. The phonation and the internal rhythm that his poetry possesses is rare to be found in his contemporaries.
When Chandrakunwar was writing, the Chhayawad, the mix of romanticism and mysticism had gained maturity and progressivism was at the anvil. Chandrakunwar is a blend of both. According a number of critics, he was blend of all the four pillars of Chhayawad- Jaishankar Prasad, Nirala, Sumitranandan Pant and Mahadevi Varma.
About three hundred poems of Chandrakunwar have come in a number of covers—Meghnandini, Payaswini, Jeetu and a few more. He wrote on clouds, cascades, river, paddy crop, 'Kafalpakku bird,' flower of 'Raimasi', dog, rat, cat, aunt, squirrel, death and so on.
His poems would have been unnoticed had those not been brought out by his friend Shambhu Prasad Bahuguna. Most of his poems saw the light of the after his death.
Many of his poems are said to have been lost. But whatever is before us, needs to be re-explored and reassessed. He deserves a place where very few of those appear in the syllabus of schools deserve to be.
