fascination

There was a poem in our Hindi syllabus Saroj Smriti. It was customary for our teacher to tell a lengthy biography of the poet. He believed that knowing the poet was necessary to know the poem. It narrowed the perspective and helped us see the poem from the same frame as the poet. Most of us used to take down the biographical notes as they were very useful in doing saprasang vyakhya (describe with context) of the verses in the poems. He started to tell about