Himalayan (Garhwali-Kumaoni ) Art , Literature

Basant Geet : Honoring Spring by many Angles
(Review of Poetry Collection Basant Geet by Mahesh Dhashmana Shashtra )
Bhishma Kukreti
Spring is an astounding natural phenomenon , spring brings many metabolic changes the earth, plants and animals or in all living organisms . That is the reason that in every language, poets created poems related to spring (Basant) . Internationally famous poets of various languages as Tu Fu, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Tusser, Amy Lowell, Henry van Dyke, Walt Whiteman, Thomas Nashe, T S Elliot, William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, E.E Cummings, Robert Herrick, Emily Dickenson, Sir Thomas Malory, E A Housman, Algernon Charles Swinburne, M. Travis Lane, Linda Pastan, P. K. Page, William Matthews, Norwegian poet Olav H. Hauge, Michael Longley, Viennese (German) poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Théophile Gautier , John Webster, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Christina Rosette, D H Lawrence, Robert Louis Stevenson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Clare, Carl Sandburg,Denis Dunn, Dorothea Grossman, Doug Holder, Margaret James, Wayne Jarus,Guy Kettelhack, Christine Klocek-Lim, Steve Meador, Justine Nicholas, Jack Peachum, Don Rehling, Lisa Shields, Larissa Shmailo, Ingrid Toth, Melissa Varnavas, Bill Vartnaw created poetries on spring (Basant ) .
In Garhwali language, there are many folk songs and sayings about spring. Many or most of the modern Garhwali poets created one or a couple of verses in Garhwali language.
Mahesh Dhashmana Shastri is the only Garhwali poet who is fully dedicated to Basant or Spring and he has been singing his spring related poems in various cultural conferences , Akashvani, in private or at any suitable place wherever audience is there from 1979. Akashvani has been relaying his spring poems for many years.
In this volume Basant-Geet ( Rhymes of Spring) , thre are twenty poems of Mahesh Dhashmana related to spring. Only.
The subject varies from the beginning of spring, changes in the season, blooming of various types of flowers in Garhwal, springing up many herbs from the earth, etc. Many poems are related to love songs ( happiness because of meeting of lovers and sadness by separation of lovers) are marvelous piece of poems. The poet also shows effect of migration from Garhwal in his spring poems and the readers will enjoy the symbols in such poems . A spring poems is for worshipping the Goddess Durga. The poet Mahesh Dhashmana also related the philosophy of Geeta to the emerging of spring and passing of spring that is coming of summer season after spring is over. Mahesh has been successful in narrating the cultural activities of Garhwali folks in the spring months (the months of song and dance) . There is prayer of spring in this volume besides the poet describing many philosophies and human /animal activities of spring thorough his poetries.
The language of poems is very simple and easily understandable. The songs created are in conventional methodology. Mahesh Dhashmana used various types of figures of speech in describing or praising spring effectively.
The history of Garhwali literature will remember Mahesh Dhashmana for his dedication to Spring in Garhwal and popularizing Basant Geet among common men through various medium .
Basant geet
By Mahesh Dhashmana Shashtri
Himalay Printing Press
Ganga Datt Joshi Marg
Kotdwara , 246149

Copyright @ Bhishma Kukreti, Mumbai, India, 2010