સુન્દરમ્

Sundaram — born Tribhuvandas Purushottamdas Luhar in the small village of Miyamatar in Bharuch district — is, alongside Umashankar Joshi, one of the two towering figures of the Gandhian era (ગાંધીયુગ) of modern Gujarati literature, a generation whose verse fused Gandhian idealism, social realism, and lyric craft. He wrote first under other pseudonyms before publishing a poem in 1928 under the name Sundaram — a Sanskrit wordplay on su-ndaram, the beautiful — which he then kept for life. His landmark 1933 collection Kavyamangala won him the Ranjitram Suvarna Chandrak, Gujarati literature’s highest honour; Vasudha (1939) and Yatra (1951) followed, and a Sahitya Akademi Award came in 1968 for his criticism, with the Padma Bhushan in 1985. From the mid-1940s he fell under the influence of Sri Aurobindo and settled at the Pondicherry ashram, entering a spiritual, integral phase of writing. Equally at home in coarse rustic satire and in tender children’s song, he left one enduring gift to Gujarati childhood — the children’s collection Rang Rang Vadaliyan, still sung in homes and schools today.