Garhwali-Poet -५ Shambhoo Prasad Dhashmana : less is more

Garhwali-Poet -5
Shambhoo Prasad Dhashmana : less is more
By: Bhishma Kukreti


Late Shambhoo Prasad Dhashman lived only for thirty six years (1930-1966) in this earth but he left his prints so powerful and deep that Bhakta Darshan Jee called him as one of the great Garhwali personalities in his famous and well researched book, “Garhwal ki Divangat Vibhtiyan”.

No doubt, the flute player, the drawing creator, a dramatist and music lover Shambhoo Prasad Dhashmana is famous in literary field for his Hindi poems but he also versed many Garhwali poems. We have only six Garhwali verses in print form and tens of his Garhwali poems are lost due to many reasons.

Shambhoo Prasad Dhashmana belonged to an elite family of Garhwal. Prayag Datt Dhashman “ Lakhpati Ji “ of ToLi village (Badalpur, Pauri Garhwal ) was his father and famous yogi Swami Ram was his uncle. He passed his graduation from Prayag Vishwavidyalaya with honour and did B.Ed. later on. He started his career as teacher and later on took commission in army and became Lieutenant in territorial army in 1962. His inclination was there for poetry and music from his childhood. He belonged to the same class of Hindi poetry creator , which Chandra Kumwar Bartwal belonged .

As said earlier he created many Garhwali poems but for record sake, we have only seven Garhwali poems .

Shambhoo Prasad Dhashmana’s poem Shri Badri Nath ki Jai Bola displays the prime importance for Garhwalis of Shri Badri Nath as Ganesh Ji is important for Hindus. He called Shri Badrinath jee the crown of Himalaya .

He used many newer and surprising symbols in his ‘Geet’ poetry. Geet poetry is about the responsibilities, actions , applications of our society for the growth and development . In this verse he also advocated about the care for below poverty people. The symbols in this poetry are boats, crossing the river, speed of boat, river water, storm and many more. In the same poem, he also presents the characterization of Garhwal and Garhwali community. I shall suggest the younger poets to read this poem and they . Definitely, will say that this poem is the example of , gagar men sagar’. The specialty and forte of this poem ‘Geet’ is that we don’t feel that the poet is teaching (aDaNu) us .

Other four poems , ‘mait chhuti ge’ ‘ghaur bauDi awa, ‘teru naunyaLu pardesh jandoo bwai’ and ‘yad oonki aand’ are the poems of pathos, memoir, love of separation, depending on luck and circumstances beyond human power. Here, also the versifier used many newer symbols of his time. The poet seems be very creative in finding the words of daily uses or what we come in contact on daily basis . He used words like kuyedi, simwaLu, hiLwans, dharDi for symbolization . These poems of pathos may be called as classic poems of Garhwali language.

No doubt, we have only seven verses of Shambhoo Prasad Dhashman but those seven are also gems of Garhwali literature. These seven poems are published with his Hindi poems in a book form, ‘Itni See Batiyan’ by his able son Ashok Dhashmana , Baroda in the year 2000.

We could have more Garhwali poems from Shambhoo Prasad Dhashmana but he died in a motor accident near Kanshkhet (Manyarsyun) on twenty second march, 1966, at the age of thirty six.

Copyright @Bhishma Kukreti, Mumbai, 2/3/2009, India , bckukreti@gmail.com