One Hundred Poems of Chokha Mela

A need was felt for its bilingual edition after One Hundred Poems of Chokha Mela became a prescribed text for MA (Hon.) in English program of the University of Mumbai. This book contains English translation and its source poem on the same page next to each other, so that the readers can compare and contrast the two texts in order to understand the translation process. We believe this arrangement will help the students of Indian Literature in Translation to understand the translation strategies one employs in order to render Marathi Bhakti literature as accurately as possible in English.

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Expressions of the human soul that dares to aspire!!! Chokha Mela was a 13th century poet from India, who was born in the most downtrodden community, yet rose to become one of the most significant poets in Indian literary history. His poems have withstood the onslaught of Time for last seven hundred years to become a timeless classic of Indian poetry. So strong is the poignant self-expression of his poems that it find its resonance even in our own digital age! What kind of self-expression does one come across in Chokha Mela's poems? The entire spectrum of human feelings, doubts, epiphanies, predicaments and realizations of the highest order are the stuff that these poems are made of. What is significant is that all these expressions in these poems are easily the experiences of the common most human being, the Poet's sainthood does not raise its spectre between him and his reader. On every word of these poems, the reader gets the feeling that what is being expressed is exactly their own heart's cry - no matter at which place and in which times they are born! Chokhoba's expression becomes the expression of each of his readers overcoming all the barriers of social, cultural, historical and geographical restrains. This is what has enabled his poems to resound in every age and every place. They have been communicating with their readers the essential human predicament - having to choose between one's lot and one's aspirations!