ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the influence of Kalidasa’s Meghadūta and courier poetry in modern Hindi literature. It focuses on two works, both composed in the mid-twentieth century: Shrikant Verma’s 1956 “Bhaṭkā megh” and G. M. Muktibodh’s 1957 “Zamāne kā cehrā.” These two poems, both composed by poets working in Central India, bring up distinct aspects of the messenger poem, revealing both the continued relevance of the Meghadūta beyond its metonymic relation to Sanskrit literature itself, as well as the complex, subterranean relationship between modern Hindi and its literary pasts. “Bhaṭkā megh,” seemingly a straightforward engagement with Kalidasa and his famous poem, connects with the Brajbhasha genre of the upālambha and reworks the meaning of the cloud in a time of famine. “Zamāne kā cehrā,” meanwhile, reshapes the spatial logic of the Cold War world through attention to the specific geographic imagination of the courier poem. Collectively, these two examples gesture toward the interpretive possibilities of thinking through the courier poem in places where it does not call attention to itself. The spatial and dialogical elements of the messenger poem, in bringing together a range of literary histories, comment on some of the central concerns of modern Hindi with political subjectivity, representation and the nation, and the imagination of global space.
