Basant Geet: Experiencing Spring Images through Various Angles

Review of Poetry Collection Basant Geet by Mahesh Dhashmana Shastri)

Critical and Chronological History of Modern Garhwali (Asian) Poetry – 12 B

                    Literature Historian:  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) , there 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. Manypoems 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 poetdescribing 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.

-------------------------बसंत ऐगे --------------------

--------------------------कवि- महेश शर्मा धष्माना ------------------

डम डमा डम बजा बजीं बसंत ऐगे

रंग रंगीलो बडो छबीलो बसंत ऐगे 

मेरो हिमवंत वाल़ो   गढवाळ देस मा 
वीर तपी जोगीं जती जण सुहाणो वेश मा

फूलों क सेरा बंधी , पात्युं  की पालकी

स्वागत बसंत तेरो , शोभा विशाल की

(बसंत -कविता संकलन से ) 

Basant Geet
By Mahesh Dhashmana Shashtri
Himalay Printing Press
Ganga Datt Joshi Marg
Kotdwara , 246149 

Year of Publication- Not mentioned 
Copyright @ Bhishma Kukreti, Mumbai, India, 2010 

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