Poetry has shaped the history and culture of India. India is the homeland of great poets like Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel laureate. But India has been home to several fascinating women who have pen beautiful poems. 

 

Zeb-Un-Nisa 

A Mughal princess, the eldest child of emperor Aurangzeb, Princess Zeb-Un-Nisa. She was born in 1638.

         I have no peace the quarry, 

         a Hunter chase me

         It is time memory; 

         I turn to flee, but fall;

         for over me, he cast his snare, 

         They perfumed hair 

         Who can escape thy prison?

         No motor heart is free

         From dreams of thee.

She began writing poetry at the age of 14, but her father did not encourage it. So she began writing in secret and chose “Makhfi” as a pen name which means the hidden one. 

 

Amrita Pritam

Amrita was born in 1919, in pre-partition Punjab. Losing her mother at the age of 11, propelled her into writing about her loneliness and sorrow.

Her first poem Amrit Lehran, which means immortal waves, was published in 1936 when she was just 16 years old.

She was influenced by the path and freedom struggle. Through her words, she stood up for oppressed women and past telling came in trees on the social structure of her time.

When the body perishes, all perish, 

But the threads of memory 

are woven of enduring atoms

I will pick the particles

Weave the threads

And I will meet you again. 

 

Kamala Surayya. 

                                                   You don’t ever love him,

                                  but you are sentimental about him.

Mostly known by her pen name Madhavi Das and Kamala Das. She is considered to be the mother of modern Indian poetry; her eyes are one of the handfuls of work that speaks honestly about women and their sexual desires. Her books of poetry ‘Summer in Calcutta’ and ‘The Descendants’ were unique honest works known for the explicit direction and direction regarding sexuality.

 

Sarojini Naidu

Lo! I have flung to the

 East and the west 

 Priceless treasures torn 

 From my breast 

A yielded the sons of 

My stricken womb 

To the drum-beats of the duty,

The sabers of doom. 

This list will be incomplete without the mention of the Nightingale of India. She was a freedom fighter, otter administrator, and poetess. She began to write at the tender age of 12 and the golden threshold was her first collection of poems.