Love and devotion for the divine personified, Meera Bai was one of the eminent saints/mystics of Vaishnava Bhaki movement. With no historical records existing about her birth, her birth anniversary is celebrated by devotees on Sharad Purnima (full moon) which has fallen on October 5 this year. 

Meera Bai is immortal because of the songs she composed and sang for her beloved Lord Krishna, says a city-based litterateur Mridul Joshi.

“Her poems or padas written for Lord Krishna are some of the most poignant in the Indian literature. She was the Hindu mystic poet of the Bhakti cult. Her poems form part of course curriculum of schools.

The lyrical verses in which Krishna is portrayed as a Yogi are over-brimming with love, longing, passion, ecstasy and joy of meeting her beloved Krishna.

There also reigns a spirit of defiance against the societal norms, the robustness of refusing to fall in line with the social strictures in her overwhelming love for the Lord she adored. The strength ruling over her faith and love can move the mountains.

The intensity lurking in her divine ecstasy-sodden words is something which we can only feel but hardly describe. She is devotion personified, a life consecrated to the Divine and the Divine alone,” says Joshi.

It is, widely, believed that Meera Bai was a disciple of Guru Ravidas. Besides, she is believed to have come in contact with Sant Tulsidas and Rupa Goswami. Acharya Vishnu Dutt, a scholar, says, “She was stopped outside the hut of the seer Guru Ravidas when she reached to meet the saint. She was told that the saint did not meet any woman devotee.

But Meera replied that she had not known any male other than Lord Krishna and that all men and women were just gopis of the Lord Krishna. She proved that her words and her deeds were perfectly matched,”  he adds.