Shyam Sunder Lal Chordia is a poet of Rajasthan and the lore of it comes down to us in the form of poetry. Generally, Rajput legacy, royalty, chivalry, forts, palaces, traditions, folks and places, saints, singers and knights haunt his imagery. The history of palace with nature and landscapes draws him closer to. 

Born in 1898 in the Rajput State of Udaipur, after his school education, did his B.A. in 1920 from Muir Central College, Allahabad, M.A. in English literature from  Allahabad University in 1922. For a year he was lecturer in English at Maharana’s Intermediate College, Udaipur, but in 1928 was taken in the Educational Service of the Central Provinces. He was Professor of English at Morris College, Nagpur and also worked at Robertson College, Jubbulpore. He was also a member of the Board of Studies in English and for some time of the Court of the Nagpur University. Edmund Gosse too wrote back to him commenting on his poetry. The Times Literary Supplement complimented with the opinion and the review.

Chordia says that Surdas is like the sun among the bards of the Braja region. Looking upon love and youth, tracking the path of truth, he kept on singing till darkness fell it upon. A poet of Krishna-prem and sweetness, he was a singer of Love Divine, a Milton of Hindi literature, devotional verses. Even though born blind, he sang of Krishna, saw the Divine Krishnalila with the nectar, honey of devotional verses coming down to him so spontaneously. To read him is to be drenched in Krishnaprem; is to feel the lilting verses. To read him is to trace the history of the Bhakti Movement. How have the folks taken to his verses? How the impact cast over the minds of the people down the ages?

Surdas – The Blind Hindi Poet

O sun among the bards of Brija green !
You looked upon the face of love and youth
And wandered in the trackless path of truth
Till darkness fell upon your vision keen.
Your light was quenched like Milton’s, but full well
You left the wizard charms of earth and sky.
Of birds and trees and flowers that bloom and die,
Rehearsing them in music’s wondrous spell.
From sunrise, moonrise, and the streaming stars
You built a perfect nesting for the blind
And trustful souls on earth to rest and find
Eternal peace untouched by raging wars.
You sang of Nature and her God sublime
In verse of gold outsoaring space and time.

Surdas . . . The Blind Hindi Poet by S. S. L. Chordia is a beautiful fitting tribute to Surdas, a homage showing affection and reverence to the great medieval-age Hindi poet, the great Krishna-bhakta writer whom the folks have ever known, whose padas have been on the lips of us. To know him is to discuss Krishna-bhakti poetry, to know him is to know the classical tradition. A blind poet he was a poet par excellence so extraordinary in his glimpses from heaven to earth, earth to heaven. When India reeled under medievalism, foreign invasion, loot and plunder, light seemed to be on the wane and unculture and superstition making a way for, it gave solace and comforted too. Sur Sagar (Sur’s Ocean) is said to be the immortal poetry work of his lasting fame written in the Braj Bhasa, taking it to be the case of the gopis, from their point of view.

One from Chitor, Chordia is a poet of the legends, folk tales and royal stories, princes and palaces and the present poem has been taken from Chitor and Other Poems.

After that she turned a widow, her brother-in-law tried to persecute and punish her, but of avail as the Lord was with her. She was so mad after love. He tried to kill her several times, but something saved her miraculously. The Rana could not feel her pangs, the pangs of her heart.

Mira----The Rajput Queen of Chitor by Chordia is a pen-portrait of Mirabai the royal persona of Chitor who kept company of sadhus, danced and sang in their company. To read the poem is go through the pages of the Bhakti Movement, Rajput history and folk stuffs. The queen differed from them who upheld the mundane stuffs aloft. Family prestige, royalty, hypocrisy, aristocracy and crowns, gems and jewels mattered not to her. Forgetting it all, she danced in a temple, she thought of Krishna to be her own, Putting it aside glory and grandeur, she sang of Krishna madly, in complete love of his. surrendering to him in the utmost humility and submission. She took Krishna to be her own, as her lover. People doubted her devotion what she quit it, cared it not.

Who does not know Mira’s story of love? How was her bhakti? How her devotion, Krishna-bhakti? When she got widowed, people doubted her devotion, the company she kept. People whispered, conspiracies were hatched in the palaces as for why she was mad after Krishna. Even though he tried to track her, he could not. Mira’s husband had been a loving husband to some extent, but his death battered her and the troubles doubled in life.

Mira – The Rajput Queen of Chitor

The Rana did not hear your music sad 
As underneath the reddening mango-grove
You chanted forth your simple songs of love
 And beauty ’midst the sadhus rapture-mad.
The whispers reached him from the market-place
Telling the wayward paths you trod. He thought 
You had some sweeter love than his and wrought
Upon his kingly line untold disgrace.
O golden-hearted Sappho of the East !
You broke a fragment of your lyric soul 
With godhead crowned for mortal man to feast ;
The Rana then divined your secret goal.
In shame and sorrow now began his quest 
While you at Brindaban were Girdhar’s guest.