Sridhar Jagannathan

Meghadutam of Kalidasa Sridhar Jagannathan

In Meghadutam, Kalidasa explores the notion of a message of love and longing, due to separation of a husband from his wife, sent through a cloud that traverses across India. In this story, a Yaksha, a servant of Kubera, the Lord of Wealth, is banished to be separate from his wife for one full year. With four months left of his sentence, the yaksha is overwhelmed by sorrow for himself and his wife. Seeing a monsoon cloud, on its way to his homeland in the Himalayas, the yaksha imagines that the cloud could be a messenger to his wife. The dominant theme in the poem is viraha ("separation") due to love. The poem is divided into two parts: the Purvamegha ("the previous cloud") ending when the cloud reaches the home of the yaksha and Uttaramegha ("the consequent cloud") when the message is transmitted by the cloud to his wife. The poem is rendered in a unique Sanskrit meter called the mandakrantha, which has seventeen syllables, consisting of a particular variation using light and heavy syllables. In this translation, the poem has been rendered in English poetic form, adhering closely to the original mandakrantha form used by Kalidasa.