World poetry museum to come up in Kanhaiya Lal Sethiya’s honour

The poetry museum will have selected poems from across the world in digital form. This will bring researchers to this Rajasthan town, the PWA president said.

The Progressive Writers Association (PWA) will set up a world poetry museum in Sujangarh town of Churu district, the birthplace of legendary Rajasthani poet Kanhaiya Lal Sethiya, and organize a poetry festival every year, said PWA state president Rituraj.

The poetry museum will have selected poems from across the world in digital form. This will bring researchers to this Rajasthan town, the PWA president said.

The PWA took its Anchal Srijan Yatra, a monthly event to take literature to villages, to Sujangarh recently to celebrate the birth centenary year of Kanhaiya Lal Sethiya.

PWA secretary Ish Madhu Talwar said the Anchal Srijan Yatra was started around two years ago to take literature to the villages and to spot talent from there to give them platform. “The yatra goes to a town that has historical importance in terms of creative arts,” he said.

Sujangarh is also the birthplace of several music maestros. Khemchand Prakash whose famous song, Aayega Aayega Aane Wala from Mahal, the 1949 Hindi film, made Lata Mangeshkar a household name, was born here. Jamal Sen, whose father Kesari Sen was a disciple of Tansen, and his son and nephew, Dilip Sen-Sameer Sen, are also from here. Writer of Dil Hai Chhota Sa, Chhoti Si Aasha for Mani Ratnam’s National Film Awards winner film, Bombay, PK Mishra, was also born in Sujangarh.

The song, Dil Hai Chhota Sa, Chhoti Si Aasha, was included in Time magazine’s top 10 songs of 21st century.

For this musical legacy of this town, PWA will also organise a festival to celebrate film music, said Talwar.

He said during the the Anchal Srijan Yatra, poet and writer Farooq Afridi read a paper on Kanhaiya Lal Sethiya, and commentator Rajaram Bhadu presented an analysis of Sethiya’s poetry in today’s social milieu. Talwar threw light on contribution of people from Sujangarh to Indian films. Jitendra Bhatia traversed the journey of film music through his lecture.

A large number of litterateurs from Jaipur and Sujangarh read their works during the two-day event. This included Charan Singh Pathik, Prem Chand Gandhi, Omendra, Vijay Rahi, GC Bagdi, Jyotsana Saxena, Sonu Choudhary, Nishant Mishra, Prakash Jangid and Puneet Sharma.