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Supreme Theme : Srngåra or Love
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ntalā and nature's kids will not fail to moisten the eyes of any spectator. Sakuntala is similarly concerned with the pregnant doe; she insists on being informed after the doe has delivered safely. The picture of a loving mother is also an important part of Kalidasa's treatment of love.
Kālidasa has not described the love between friends elaborately. But the few suggestive touches found in his writing are sufficient to indicate the span of such unselfish love. The cheerful companions of Sakuntalā, Anasüyā and Priyam adā, ready to make fun of her at times but looking after her like a mother-creeper after her flower, breaking down into tears at the moment of separation from her, and prepared to sacrifice anything to safeguard her interests; Citralekhā, the loving and understanding companion of Urvasi; Bakulāvalikā, the companion-maid of Mālavikā; and the Vidūşaka, particularly Gautama, serving his royal friend faithfully in spite of occasional blunders and foolishness: these pictures are likely to be sharply etched on our memory. An unexpected context reveals Kālidāsa's concept of friendship: Rati mourning for her Madana says, "Men's love for their women may be unsteady; but it is not so in the case of their friends'.61 Rati appeals that Madana should return to life if not for her at least for the sake of his friend Vasanta. For, a man's love for a friend is unchangeable. What truer description of friendly affaction can be given than this?
The love of man and woman is, however, the favourite theme of literature. The complexity of this aspect of love is very engaging and offers a perpetual challange to art presentation. Kālidāsa's treatment of this love reveals its many facets. The first love which leads to marriage and union is a romantic and thrilling experience. A lover's mind passes through a whole range of emotions like doubt, despair, jealousy, anxiety and anguish, till the moment of fulfilment arrives. The plays of Kālidāsa and his picture of Pārvati in the Kumarasambhava show this rainbow of transitory mental states. This picture of love before it is crowned with marriage is always poetic, alluring and delightful in literary presentation.
Like the romantic love, married love or the love of husband and wife has also engaged the attention of Kālidāsa. An impressive picture of the married love is to be found in the lives of Dilipa and Sudaksiņā, Aja and Indumati, Rāma and Sītā, Rati and Madana. Aja's love is a measure of the solidarity and depth of a husband's love for his wife. An understanding couple is a picture of two bodies in which one soul is residing. The wife is not merely the mistress of the house; she is the truest conpanion and friend, a wise counsellor who steers the ship of the couple's life through the stormy sea of worldly existence62. In social life a woman's position may well be secondary to man; but in the domain of family life the woman, as a wife, rules the household and her husband. And as a true companion she is on the footing of equality with the man; for, friendship is not founded on inequality and difference. This is the answer of art to the social inequality between man and woman. The social life
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