Cart Driver by Padma Sachdev
Central Idea: The poem “Cart Driver ” is a wonderful poem written by Padma Sachdev. The poem talks about the love that a mother has for her children. It is an atmosphere of mystery that creates fear and dread. The bulbul feels the danger of fire in its home (forest) in the poem. To save her fledgelings, she wants to rush to them, but she finds herself unable to move or fly out of fear.
Cart Driver Summary
This poem is about the love a mother has for her children. It is a hair–raising atmosphere that created fear an dread. It is a tussle between love the mother has for her own self and she has for her children. In the darkness of night, a bulbul is looking for food for its four little ones. It is moving its steps very cautiously. On hearing a sound the bulbul gets unstable. It wants to reach its nest quickly with grain in its beak. A bullock cart passes through the forest. The bulbul hides. The cart is moving but the driver is asleep. The bird imagines that if the hookah overturns the forest will catch fire. The bulbul wants to fly to its nest but it is not able to lift its legs out of fear.
CART DRIVER BY PADMA SACHDEV ( TEXT)
(Translated from the Dogri by Dr Karan Singh)
Paraphrase of Cart Driver
Line (1 – 7): The poet says he hears the sound of the footfalls of a careful bulb in a fearful silence of the forest. The bulb was out in the evening, shaking its feathers on his head. In the frightening night, the bulbul finds food for his young ones hungry in the nest.
Line (8 – 18): The poet says the bulbul is slowly moving out of fear. It has raised its ears because of the sound that it has heard from somewhere.
The bulb with the grain carrying in it hastens to its nest. The fledgelings make a series of short, high sounds in the nest, without knowing that their living place ( forest) is in danger. They continue to chirp, but the bulb continues to tremble out of fear. The bulbul carefully moves with its ears raised and remains itself on a complete alert.
Line (19 – 28): All of sudden, there is a sound of wheels in the forest. The wheels of the bullock-cart also produce a sound of dry leaves crackling. It is a sound that grows and then becomes less powerful. When this sound is heard, the bulbul rushes to the bushes and hides behind them. It saw a bullock-cart loaded with goods, the driver sleeping. He snores and his eyes are covered with a turban on his head. The bullocks move with their heads down by themselves.
Really nice