मस्ती का आलम साथ चला, हम धूल उड़ाते जहाँ चले
आए बनकर उल्लास कभी, आँसू बनकर बह चले अभी.
सब कहते ही रह गए, अरे तुम कैसे आए, कहाँ चले
किस ओर चले? मत ये पूछो, बस चलना है इसलिए चले,
जग से उसका कुछ लिए चले, जग को अपना कुछ दिए चले...
It may be about 20yrs back when I‘d read these lines somewhere. They were quoted in an article without mentioning the name of the author. I do not remember the article anymore but these lines somehow got imprinted at the back of my mind. I desperately wanted to know the author. In those days internet was not available so that I could have searched it on Google. Few days later when I was reciting these verses to one of my friends, his younger brother suddenly jumped to say these lines were part of a poetry given in his Hindi text book. I immediately asked him the author. He told- ……..भगवतीचरण वर्मा.
Just few weeks after that on fine Friday morning when we friends were sitting in university canteen we came to know that in one of our class rooms a few scenes of a new TV series are going to be shot on the coming Sunday. We all became excited; perhaps it was first time that we were going to witness a thing of this sort. Very next day one of our friend who knew some crew member gave us an invitation to be part of the class room scene. So our group decided that in-spite of Sundays being very holy to us, we will come next day to play the role of extras. On the day of shooting we were amazed to be in company of Shekhar Suman and Dinesh Shakul of “Chandra Gupta Maurya” fame. At that time Shekhar was not as popular as he is today. We were asked to sit on back seats with these guys. The serial was “Teen Varsha” televised on Lucknow Doordarshan during 1993 and subsequently on national network during 1995. We were pleased to see our faces as co-students of these TV stars in few classroom scenes of that serial. This serial was based on the novel by भगवतीचरण वर्मा of the same name.
Perhaps that was the start and end of our carriers as television artists however subsequent to above incident I got a chance to read several poetries of भगवतीचरण वर्मा. The philosophy of life and love expressed in simple verses is a unique feature of his poetry that impressed me …..
तुम अपनी हो, जग अपना है
किसका किस पर अधिकार प्रिये
फिर दुविधा का क्या काम यहाँ
इस पार या कि उस पार प्रिये ।
We generally come across works of some authors’ accidenently but they leave an everlasting impression on our memory and perspective towards life…… so was this author and his bold and straight forward style….
देखो, सोचो, समझो, सुनो, गुनो औ' जानो
इसको, उसको, सम्भव हो निज को पहचानो
लेकिन अपना चेहरा जैसा है रहने दो,
जीवन की धारा में अपने को बहने दो…