Shaper Shaped

The multifaceted personality, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya was a poet, dramatist, actor, singer, songwriter, Member of the Parliament, and actor all rolled into one. His ‘Rail gaadi, rail gaadi’ lyrics from the 1968 Hindi movie Aashirwad still reverberates in the minds of multitudes. He was a man of assorted abilities and the younger brother of Sarojini Naidu, the legendary Nightingale of India. He wrote poetry in English as well as in Hindi and penned lyrics for films also. He wrote a play entitled Tukaram based on the celebrated saint-poet of the name from Maharashtra. Chattopadhyaya was a bountiful poet and his works comprise The Feast of Youth (1918), The Magic Tree (1922), Poems and Plays (1927), Strange Journey (1936), The Dark Well (1939), Edgeways and the Saint (1946), Spring in Winter (1956), Masks and Farewells (1951), Virgins and Vineyards (1967), and Life and Myself (1948). The government honored Chattopadhyaya with the coveted Padma Vibhushan award in 1972. Even at the age of 88, he used to say, “I am a little boy”. The man who never wanted to grow up bid adieu to the stages and pages of life in 1990.

I happened to flip through the poem “Shaper Shaped” the other day. I was extremely impressed by this exquisite poem especially by the way Chattopadhyaya’s words yield and stir the inner soul of a human being. His poem made me feel that poetry is no more a safari to the utopian land of marvel. Rather, poetry is a journey to the contours of one’s self. We can sense a sort of being to becoming in his verses of simple diction and sanguine meaning. Let me share one of his best-remembered poem with all my readers.

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