બાલાશંકર કંથારિયા

Balashankar Ullasram Kantharia is the founder of the Gujarati ghazal — the poet who carried the Persian forms of Hafiz into Gujarati and made them sound native. Born in Nadiad in 1858, he edited literary magazines, translated Sanskrit classics like the Mrichchhakatika and the Sufi ghazals of Hafez, and wrote under a fan of pen names — Klant Kavi, Bal, Nijanand, Mast — as if one self were too small for his moods. His long poem ક્લાન્ત કવિ gave him the sobriquet he is remembered by, and his ગુજારે જે શિરે તારે gave the language a proverb. A Shakta devotee with a Sufi’s temperament, equally at home in Sanskrit metres and Persian radif, he died of plague in Vadodara at thirty-nine — but the generation he unlocked, Kalapi above all, made the ghazal one of Gujarati’s permanent voices.