હરીન્દ્ર દવે

Harindra Dave — born in the village of Khambhra in Kutch and shaped by a lifetime in Mumbai’s newsrooms — was one of modern Gujarati literature’s most beloved lyric poets and a career newspaperman. Of all poetic forms, two suited him best, the geet (song) and the ghazal, and he is regarded as a modern master of both; his collection Hayati won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978. By day he was an editor — sub-editor at the daily Janashakti, editor of the digest Samarpan, and from 1979 until his death the Editor-in-Chief of the Janmabhoomi–Pravasi group of newspapers — and a Goenka award marked his journalism. He was also a serious Krishna scholar whose 700-page study Krishna ane Manav Sambandho (1982) explored the god through the lens of human relationship, the same tender, worldly attention that animates his most famous song, Madhav Kyayn Nathi. A prolific novelist as well, he loved that line enough to title his 1970 novel after it. He won the Ranjitram Suvarna Chandrak in 1982 and, from Madhya Pradesh, the Kabir Award — honours for a poet who made the divine feel like a familiar, half-remembered ache.