Meghadūta

Kalidasa's poetry shows the same gentle attentiveness to the natural world.

In his long poem Megaduta, or The Cloud Messenger, an exiled spirit asks a passing raincloud to carry a message of love to his distant wife.

And through this simple premise, Kalidasa paints an entire journey across the Indian landscape, describing rivers, mountains, and cities with such loving detail that the poem doubles as both a tender love story and a geographic tour of the ancient subcontinent.

His other works, including the epic poems Raghuvamsha and Kumarasambhava, explore themes of duty, devotion, and the complex relationships between god, kings, and ordinary mortals.

Yes? Wa- water messenger.

But I was thinking this morning, uh, I think it's a takeoff from a very famous poem, Meghaduta, by the famous, uh, fifth or sixth century poet, or fourth century, uh, Kalidas.

And Me- Meghaduta is a, uh, it's a love poem.

It's a, it's a message of, of love.

So the Jaladuta, I think, has also became a mes-- with Srila Prabhupada, became a, a messenger of love.

But none of these things match up to you.

I am suffering without you." This is Kalidasa in his famous epic poem Meghaduta.

Welcome back to Art Indica with Dr. Alka Pande and me, Nidhesh, uh, presented by Abirboti and this is our episode number 19.

And we have been talking in this season number two of Indian art and erotica and sex, and now we move to the part where we talk about love and longing.

So viraha is very interesting because viraha is where, you know, the, uh, the lover and the l- the beloved are not together and there's huge longing.

And there's a h- there's a, there's a huge bit of poetry, uh, and the whole spectrum of, uh, poetry and art written around viraha.

How do we kind of see longing? Because, uh, as I was talking about Kalidasa in Meghaduta, we have seen that in Tamil Sangam poetry wr- written around 2,000 years back, and then, uh, uh, uh, and it has been throughout, like, you, you, as, as you were saying, even in Urdu poetry and that we merge from the physical, uh, to the divine, to the spiritual, and the transition happening th- through that.

How do we, uh, see that?