A poem by the British poet laureate Simon Armitage, titled ‘Lockdown,’ about the Coronavirus pandemic, published in the Guardian on 21st March 2020, which was influenced by the Meghaduta or The Cloud Messenger by Kalidasa, inspired me to read the Meghaduta in original Sanskrit and its various English translations. Fortunately, I had studied Sanskrit in my high school in Rajgir, Nalanda, Bihar, which came in handy. It was one of my favourite subjects those days and I still remember several shlokas by heart, which have become part of my everyday life.
The World Catalogue shows 250 editions of Meghaduta in various languages. I chose to read the verse translation by H.H. Wilson published over 200 years ago in 1814, prose-poem translation by Col. H.A. Ouvry in 1868, translation with exhaustive notes by Mallinatha published in 1895 and translation by Chandra Rajan published by the Sahitya Akademi in 1997.
These are fine translations, however, I felt that this breathtaking poem of 111 stanzas needed to be presented to the younger generation in a more contemporary language, especially during the time of the lockdown across the planet, to help them to cope with it. The poem is about a Yaksha or an attendant spirit of Kubera, the Lord of Wealth, who is in lockdown for a year in central India for neglecting his duties in the mythical city of Alaka, in the high Himalayas near Mount Kailasa.
Meghaduta is full of detailed descriptions of flora and fauna of the central and north India as well as of its hills, rivers, mountains, legends, beliefs, traditions, mythologies, rituals, high erotica, among others. I have tried my best to preserve the names of the plants and animals, rivers, hills and mountains, traditions and styles, as in the original Sanskrit text of Kalidasa, providing their modern names in the note below each stanza in which they appear. I think it is very important to keep their original names least we forget them and lose these treasures.
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