Monday, May 18, 2009

Munshi PremChand


Some days back I was getting bored and wanted to read something good and remembered that sometime back my father presented me with 2 books “Nirmala” and “Prema”. I started reading them and suddenly was lost in 18th century India and finally when I came back to 21st century again, I realized its 8’0 in night and I started at 12 in afternoon. The reason for this was:
The writer of many famous novels and one of the leaders in Hindi Literature Premchand. He was born on July 31, 1880 in the village Lamhi near Varanasi to Munshi Ajaib Lal, a clerk in the post office, and his wife Anandi. His parents named him Dhanpat Rai (master of wealth) while his uncle, Mahabir, a rich landowner, called him Nawab (Prince), the name Premchand first chose to write under. Premchand's parents died young - his mother when he was seven and his father while he was sixteen or seventeen and still a student. Premchand was left responsible for his stepmother and step-siblings.
In 1899, Premchand left Lamahi to take up the position of a schoolmaster at a mission school in the town of Chunar at a salary of eighteen rupees a month, with which he had to support his wife, his stepmother, his half-brother, his stepmother's younger brother and himself. Times were hard for the young man and they became harder still when he was fired from the job for being 'too independent'. He returned to Lamahi and soon got a job as an assistant master at a government school in Benaras, only to be transferred two months later to Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh a town near Allahabad where he first started writing seriously. He wrote over 300 stories, a dozen novels and two plays. The stories have been compiled and published as Maansarovar. Premchand lived a life of financial struggle. Once he took a loan of two-and-a-half rupees to buy some clothes. He had to struggle for three years to pay it back.
The main characteristic of Premchand's writings is his interesting story-telling and use of simple language. His novels describe the problems of the rural peasant classes. He avoided the use of highly Sanskritized Hindi (as was the common practice among Hindi writers), but rather he used the dialect of the common people. many of Premchand's stories were influenced by his own experiences with poverty and misery. His stories represented the ordinary Indian people as they were, without any embellishments. Unlike many other contemporary writers, his works didn't have any "hero" or "Mr. Nice" - they described people as they were. Premchand was a contemporary of some other literary giants of that era like Acharya Ram Chandra Shukla and Jaishankar Prasad.
Premchand has written about 300 short stories, several novels as well as many essays and letters. He has also written some plays. He also did some translations. Many of Premchand's stories have been translated into English and Russian. Godaan (The Gift of a Cow), his last novel, is considered the finest Hindi novel of all times.[4] The protagonist, Hori, a poor peasant, desperately longs for a cow, a symbol of wealth and prestige in rural India. Hori gets a cow but pays with his life for it. After his death, the village priests demand a cow from his widow to bring his soul to peace. In Kafan (Shroud), a poor man collects money for the funeral rites of his dead wife, but spends it on food and drink.
These two novels I read have lighted a new light to read all his literatures when I get time and I believe that his stories can definitely lead people to a much more stronger, decent world full of love to live in………………….

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Unexplored Temples of India


It was a long weekend and we were planning to spend it “Far From the madding Crowd”.

SO, the gears were ready and me Sunil and Amit started at a little early morning at 7’ 0 clock. Really friends the sound of roaring engine never felt so good, and finally the goggles went on with some rocking music and our plane (Hundai Verna ) was ready for a flier. Our plan was to visit some of the remote, unexplored basically lost temples of South India near Bangalore (Karnataka).

Our first Destination was famous Kotilingeshwara Temple. It falls in Kolar District of Karnataka approx. 130 KM by road from Bangalore. The engine was roaring to its best and we were leaving trail of vehicles behind us so that we can reach there early and after that continue our journey to some unexplored temples. Finally, we reached there by 10’0 clock, and the first view from road to temple mesmerized us proving our decision right to visit this temple.

This temple as of know contains 87 Lakhs Shivalingas and the plan is to reach out for 1 crore lingas. Apart from these lines and lines of shivalingas like a standing green crop there is one main shivalinga standing 130 mts tall and exactly opposite is a sculpture of Nandi falling no short of the lingas length.

The view was so good so eye catching that you could have spend almost whole day there, however, we did main pooja and after having some refreshments started for our next destination “Kaivara”.

Kaivara is famous for Kaivara temple and the scenic beauty and definitely the leading roads with standing crop and greenery made the journey pleasant. The temple is situated over the hill and hence the drive on the hill ways was really exciting. As we visited kaivara temple we saw the standing temple proving many laws of the nature wrong. The monument was so big with wonderful architecture and designs and many monuments of Mira, Sant Tukaram, etc. But, the main surprise was still to come.

There were stairs in the temple and the stairs lead us to a dark cave, where we have to enter half our backbone twisted and what we saw “A golden murti of Lord Vishnu” which is said to appear by itself in the cave. There was a big murti of lord “Narshimma”. The temple was totally a mesmerizing place with a pleasant ambience which fills your heart with new charisma……………..”

The big mountain peaks around the temple presented the people with such a great view that you can spend hours and hours viewing them.

These unexplored and somewhat lost temples of India prove to everyone that how strong, rich, charazmatic we were in our ancient times and when today most of the buildings falls in a short time these temples are still away from the reach of natural disasters and climatic changes. I have more about the journey as our next destination was “Kailash Giri” and “Kurudumale” temple, but will tell that in the next blog. However, after visiting these two places we were sure that there is definitely more excitement and pleasure to come our way………..

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Thursday, May 14, 2009

मौसम


तुझ से मिलने को कभी हम जो मचल जाते हैं तो ख्यालों में बोहत दूर निकल जाते हैं . गर वफाओं में सदाक़त भी हो और शिद्दत भी . फिर तो एहसास से पत्थर भी पिघल जाते हैं . उसकी आँखों के नशे में हैं जब से डूबे . लडखडाते हैं कदम और संभल जाते हैं . बेवफाई का मुझे जब भी ख्याल आता है अश्क रुखसार पर आँखों से निकल जाते हैं . प्यार में एक ही मौसम है बहारों का मौसम लोगः मौसम की तरह फिर कैसे बदल जाते हैं

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