Indian Love Poetry

Love is a universal feeling but a few lines of musings from a poet—assembled words perhaps softly spoken—can express a romance or desire that if we don't yet have we'd probably like to. And so poets have burnished their dreams throughout history and across the globe, in every culture past and present. For most of us Indian Love Poetry tends to be the erotic and explicit Kama Sutra and The Perfumed Garden. Or the epic adventures in rather grander volumes such as The Epic Of Gilamesh or the Mahabararata. But this Indian Love Poetry explores an altogether softer, gentler more soulful side. Many of the poems you will hear are by writers now forgotten or obscure but whose words speak with a clarity and beauty that belies the fact they were written and translated, in some cases, many centuries ago from Sanskrit and Tamil and then later Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam and Bengali. This selection includes such famed poets as Tagore and Rumi who carefully document observed facets and flakes of love. Men speak about their love and longing for a woman and more unusually for its time, women speak of their love and longing for men. It's a special and unique compilation and whilst new and different is something we can still share and understand.