Never heard of Narsinh Mehta?

Mission accomplished That describes the current mood of Chicagobased journalistturnedauthor Mayank Chhaya who had committed himself to two projects First a 75minute documentary titled Gandhirsquos Song on the 15th century Gujarati poetphilosopher Narsinh Mehta Second an ebook Narsinh The Poet for the Eons that honours Mehta as Gujaratrsquos first social reformer who coined the term harijan While the documentary pivots around the poetrsquos popular bhajan Vaishnav Jan To Tene Kahiye the book is an introduction to the poet in a broader context beyond the Gujarati ethos where he is already reveredMayank Chhaya at the Mahatmarsquos room in Gandhi Ashram AhmedabadPromotion of both projects factors in Chhayarsquos visit to India particularly Mumbai where he began his journalistic career in 1982 He plans to hold a joint media event to boost the sales of the book and documentary The last time he was in India was when he shot for three months in Ahmedabad Talaja Gopnath and Junagadh in Saurashtra where Mehtarsquos life unfolded 14141480 Currently he is busy with social media initiatives for engaging audiences in India and overseas A website titled Gandhirsquos Song excerpts from the book Chhaya is also promoting bits of Narsinh Mehtarsquos poetry on Twitter as well as FacebookNarsinh Mehta lives on through his workThe book available online at 1 R 65 approximately starting October 20 and the documentary to be released worldwide a little later emerge from Chhayarsquos personal appreciation of a writer of hundreds of songs verses and ballads with great poetic and philosophical depthBook cover of Narsinh The Poet for the EonsHe feels that Mehtarsquos influence on the making of India has not been sufficiently appreciated While there have been attempts to capture the poetrsquos magic by the Gujarati film industry there has been ldquoNothing that accords him the kind of serious professional attention that he so eminently deservesrdquoA particular instance served as a trigger for Chhaya to take up the projects When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was feted at the Madison Square Garden in September 2014 violin maestro L Subramaniam and his singer wife Kavita Krishnamurthy performed a recomposed version of Mehtarsquos Vaishnav Jan To No one mentioned that it was written by Narsinh Mehta ldquoI wanted to undo that omissionrdquoChhaya feels Mehtarsquos life offers great potential to capture aspects of Gujaratrsquos cultural depth thatrsquos often not discussed Mehtarsquos poetry mostly transmitted orally over the first couple of centuries after his death suffused Saurashtra and beyond It impacted generations and has been internalised in peoplersquos consciousness which needs to be acknowledgedExcerpts from an interview with ChhayaQ While in Chicago how did you think of Narsinh Mehta Gandhi and Vaishnav Jan ToA Narsinh Mehta has been a subject of my literary passion He is one of the worldrsquos great poetic and philosophical minds the boundaries of whose fame are constricted by the language barrier Gujaratis of a certain generation know him very well and not just because of Vaishnav Jan To He is regarded as Gujaratrsquos lsquoAdi Kavirsquo someone who not only practically invented the Gujarati poetic form but refined it to the highest level of literary and philosophical expression A documentary and a book about Mehta have been on my todo list for at least two decades It has been difficult to find backers for a project of this nature In the past year I have managed to get three funders in Dahyabhai Prajapati and Dr Bharat Thakkar both based in Chicago and Tapan Vaidya in Bahrain I believe Mehta is ready to cross over as a world poetQ The trigger was the bhajan Vaishnav Jan ToA One of the things about Vaishnav Jan To that always amused me was that people think Gandhi wrote it When I tell them it precedes Gandhi by four centuries they are surprised The choice of the title Gandhirsquos Song is because of this It gets a foot in the door for Mehta Vaishnav Jan To or lsquoThe Truly Righteous Onersquo lays down a simple yet exacting secular nondenominational and remarkably modern benchmark for upright human conduct It is not only one of the worldrsquos most sung creations but also a defining cultural standard for Indiarsquos campaign for freedom from nearly two centuries of British ruleQ In the context of USIndia relations and Narendra Modirsquos US visit a book on a Gujarat poet will resonate in AmericaA I do not believe there is any interest in a book on Narsinh Mehta among the Gujarati diaspora other than a few individuals of a certain generation He is of an order that rises too much above the social media generationrsquos intellect Their language is fractured and expression hobblesQ How are you going to juggle both projects with your busy schedule as foreign policy commentatorA The documentary has been my preoccupation for the last eight months I had a clear idea in my mind to use Vaishnav Jan To as the gateway to Narsinh Mehta as a larger poetphilosopher There are three anchor interviews and a narrative woven around it I had already done enough reading over the years to not have to do something special for the documentary when it came to research I freshened my perspective by reading two outstanding books on him both written by Gujaratrsquos literary giants mdash Umashankar Joshi and Kanaiyalal MunshiQ Mumbai to you meansA Mumbai is where I began my journalistic life in The Free Press Journal and where I opened the floodgates of the reservoir of my English expression I began conversing in English only after coming to Mumbai at 21 Until then I had just read a lot in Ahmedabad where I was born I was always direct but after coming to Mumbai I became unabashedly so That is one element of the Mumbai state of mind that I still carryThe writer is a Mumbaibased cultural chronicler