Here’s another collection of poems by Nirankardev Sevak —poems that you will find many a child singing along while doing chores or playing with odds and ends in the rural stretches of north India. The poems have been read and sung since ages—in school, at home and out in the playgrounds with rhythm and joy. In today’s fast-moving times of modernity where even children are often closeted within four walls, poems like these bring back the fragrance of the soil. They bring nature to us and also pave the way for bringing education of the child close to nature. They encompass everything in the environ: animals, birds, trees and plants, insects, games played indoors and outdoors, our wants, food, the village and the town… And they are able to make a direct connection with the inner world of the child reader.
November 2022, volume 46, No 11