Dada Lakhmi

The Luminous Bard of Haryana Lakhmichand

27th- English version of Haryanvi Literature:

In love or separation, detachment or envy, chivalry or social duty, affection or the parental love, this world or the heaven, Guru floats along with Lakhmi Chand's thoughts like the river-flow with a swimmer. This is what made him an Eklavya in the domain of poetic archery. If nature is harsh in one way, it is equally kind in another. It deprives a man in one aspect and more than compensates him by enriching him in the other. On the one hand, Lakhrni chand was an illiterate and poor rustic, on the other, he was a king of music, poetry and dramatic performances. There is a rare example in the history of an artist of this stature who excelled in poetry, acting, music and refined singing. It is said about Amir Khusro, "if an orphan became a royal poet, he was Amir Khusro." Likewise it can be said about Lakhmi Chand that if any ordinary cow-grazer rose to the heights of moon encompassing the entire sky of folk art, he was Lakhmi Chand. It would not amount to an exaggeration to say that after the Ram Charita Manas of Tulsi, Sufi Couplets of Kabir, and devotional poems of Meera and Surdas, if any other poet shaped and influenced thoroughly the thinking of Haryana's folk mind, he is Lakhmi Chand. He is a pillar of modesty and ascribes his entire knowledge and enrichment to the Guru and the god in following stanza from Saang Seth Tara Chand.

("Meeting with an emotional embrace of moving hearts, Seth Mansa and Tara Chand met after a lapse of twelve years.)

God should be kind to offer a protective longevity to this relationship-an endeared friend meeting a friend is a God meeting a man in human frame.'