Dina Nath Kaul Nadim, whose poetry was part of Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget presentation on Saturday, is a tall literary icon in the pantheon of Kashmiri literature.
On Saturday, the finance minister quoted from the poem Myon Watan (My Country) by Dina Nath Kaul Nadim.
“Son watan, gulzar Shalimar hyuv, Dal manj, folwoon Pamposh hyuv, navjawan an hund, wushun khumar hyuv, myon watan, hyon watan, son watan, nundwon watan,” she recited the lines from the poem.
The FM then translated it in Hindi as she presented her Budget 2020 speech in Parliament.
“Humara watan khilte huye Shalimar Bagh jaisa, humara watan Dal Lake mein khilte huye kamal jaisa… Naujawan ke garam khan jaisa.. Mera waten, tera watan, humara watan duniya ka sabse pyara watan,” she said while translating the poem.
Born in 1916, Kaul was influenced by the works of Kashmir’s most celebrated poetess Lal Ded or Lalla. The late writer is learnt to have mentioned how he was influenced by Lalla’s works while listening to his mother recite her verses while she sat at the spinning wheel.
Winner of the Sahitya Akademi award for Shihul Kul a collection of his poems, Kaul shifted from writing in Urdu to Kashmiri and was given the nom de plume of Nadim.
His literary journey shows the influence of communism and progressive writers and was among the founders of the Left movement in Kashmir.
In an interview to a media house, he had recalled travelling to China and the erstwhile USSR and having contributed to Kwang Posh – a monthly journal run by the communists of Kashmir.
His opera, Bombur Te Yambarzal, held the record of being one of the longest staged performances in Kashmir. Kaul’s repertoire has poems in English and Hindi apart from Urdu and Kashmiri.
In his translation of the poet’s work, writer Arvind Gigoo refers to Kaul as “one of the greatest and influential” poets of the 20th-century Kashmir.
“He is known for his only collection of poems Shihul Kul (The Shady Tree). The collection includes his ghazals, vakhs, haikus, sutras, songs, sonnets and other small poetic forms representing different phases of his life as a poet. The anthology won him the Sahitya Academy Award (India’s National Academy of Letters) for 1986,” Gigoo writes.
“His poems Mye Chham Aash Pagahich (I Hope For Tomorrow), Bu Gyav Ni Aaz (My Song Shall Remain Unsung Today) and Nabad Tyathavyan (Candy and Wormseed) are some of the finest poems of modern Kashmiri literature,” he says.
