Appointment with Kalidasa

Author(s): G K Bhatt
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 28

Literary Works
message of cheer will, therefore, be very opportune and will strengthen her hope and will to go through the remainder of days with patience and courage.
The Yaksa asks the cloud to introduce himself as a beloved friend of her husband and to convey to her that he is upharmed in body in his hermitage on the Rāmagiri and is asking after her well-being. The Yakşa has not been able to block the memory of his loving wife even for a moment; his body aches for her close touch; he sees her likeness in several objects of nature; lack of sleep deprives him of the delight of seeing her in a dream, and the waking hours of the day rob him of the pleasure of painting her likeness because the gushing tears spoil the effort But he is living on hope and wants his wife to do the same; for happiness must follow Sorrow in the universal scheme of nature. The curse will terminate on the eleventh day of Kārtika, and the remaing four months must be passed with eyes closed. When reunited in love, the beautiful autumnal nights brilliant with moonlight will be theirs to wipe out the agonies of separation with re-doubled pleasures of love. With this message of hope, consolation and abiding love, the Yakșa also prays that the cloud may never experience separation, even for a moment, from his own beloved, the lightning.
The first half of the lyric presents a series of pictures of beautiful nature in which the flowers, creepers, birds and animals, rivers and mountains, come alive with a life of their own; and there are either loving associations connected with them or there is the tender emotion of love and attachment which illumines them. The second half of the poem is a picture gallery of human emotions, of love and love in separation, each picture mounted on the beautiful frame of marvellous nature. Kalidasa has chosen the slow-moving Mandākrāntā metre which pauses in its pace, as a fitting vehicle for the expression of vipralumbha śrngära, so that the mood of pervading sorrow is matched by the slow, halting movement of the words. He has further shown an instinctive poetic genius in ending the poem on the message, with a defipite promise of cheer, consolation and reunion, allowing the human heart to enjoy the bitterness of sorrow laced with the assurance of happiness, which is the deeper truth of life. And in keeping the background of the story and the personality of the central characters vague, lost in mythological belief and poetic imagination, he has endowed the poem with a universal quality and appeal. What does it matter who this Yaksa is (kaścit)? It is not his story, but the story and the intensely moving emotional experience of the human heart. The poem is a sad-sweet song of the human heart. Its poetry, beauty and tenderness of emotion have made it an immortal piece of literature. Its imitations by the scores in the history of Sanskrit titerature and its innumerable translations prove its abiding attraction and aesthetic value.
3. Kumarasambhava
The subject of Kumārasambhava is the love of Siva and Pārvatī, their marriage and the birth of Kumāra or Kārtikeya, who later slays the demon Tāraka and reli