A commemorative postage stamp on Mahadevi Varma (modern Meera), a Hindi poet from the Chhayavad era of Hindi literature :

Issued by India

Issued on Sep 16, 1991

Description of Designs : The Commemorative stamps and the First Day Cover have been designed by Shri Sankh Samant. The Cancellation has been designed by Mrs. Neenu Gupta. The stamp on Mahadevi Verma depicts the portrait of the personality and a drawing based on her painting ‘Varsha’. The stamp on Jayshankar Prasad depicts the portrait of the personality and an illustration describing the first lines of his poem Kamayani.

Type : Stamp, Postal Used

Colour : Two colour

Denomination : 200 Paise

Overall size : 2.90 x 7.82 cms.

Printing size : 2.54 x 7.45 cms.

Perforation : 13 x 13

Paper : Indigenous Un W/M gravure coated Gummed Stamp Paper

Number Printed : 6,00,000

Number per issue sheet : 28

Printing Process : Photogravure

Printed : India Security Press

Name : Mahadevi Varma

Born on Mar 26, 1907 at Farrukhabad, Farrukhabad District, Uttar Pradesh, British India

Died on Sep 11, 1987 at Alwar, Rajasthan, India

About : 

• Mahadevi Verma one of the greatest luminaries of modern Hindi literature, was born in 1907 at Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh. Married at an early age, she started her education practically thereafter and eventually took her M.A. in Sanskrit (1933). As Principal of the Prayag Mahila Vidyapeeth, she was one of the founders of women’s education in Uttar Pradesh.
  
• In 1930, Mahadevi‘s Nihar was published. In Rashmi (1932), Neerja (1934) and Sandhya Geet (1936) she developed her own style within the Chhayavad movement. When Deepshikha (1942) appeared, she was already defending the movement to which she belonged against the new movement of progressivism. Love is the basic theme of her poetry – love neither physical (or mundane), nor psycho-physical.
  
• As a poet, Mahadevi creates a world of silent movements in which everything moves softly and serenely. Her metaphors are delicate and rarefied, with the moist nectar of the flowers and the colours of the rainbow embedded in them. There is a taint of sadness to which, however, is never so sharp as to become unbearable owing to the abstract quality of her conceptual imagery. However, in spite of abstractions, the total impact of her poetry is of composite faith in Beauty and in its existence all around us.
• As a prose writer Mahadevi is lucid, direct, concrete and thought-provoking. In Shrankhala ki Kadiyan, she has spoken for the women tortured in a man-oriented society. Her logic is crisp, language forceful and the style never loud. In Ateet ke Chalchitra, she writes about people who came in her life – people who were completely neglected by the society in which they were born.
• She is delightful as a painter but has stuck to traditional forms, deriving the pictorial from the literary.
• One of the greatest Hindi poets of all times, Mahadevi Verma has been honoured with several awards, such as the Seksaria Prize and the Mangala Prasad Prize of Hindi Sahitya Sammelan besides the conferment of ‘Padma Bhushan‘ by the President of India. She died on 11^th September, 1987.
• Text : Courtesy Sahitya Academi, New Delhi. The painting ‘Varsha’ has been used for the designing of the stamp on Mahadevi Verma courtesy Leader Press, Allahabad.

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