Hyderabad: Sarojini Naidu’s Hussainsagar poem to be installed at Tank Bund

HYDERABAD: Sarojini Naidu's poem on Hussainsagar lake is likely to be inscribed on a stone plaque at Tank Bund here to immortalise the life and times of the Nightingale of India in the princely Hyderabad State.
Responding to a suggestion from a city architect and heritage enthusiast, Asif Ali Khan, on microblogging site Twitter, special chief secretary (urban development) Arvind Kumar said he would look into the suggestion.“Will certainly look into and do the needful,” Arvind Kumar tweeted on Sunday.
Hyderabad had a pride of place for Sarojini Naidu, who received a scholarship from the Nizam VI to pursue higher education outside British India. She would sit on the banks of the Hussainsagar lake for hours together for inspiration to pen her poetry. She penned many poems on Hyderabad and its life and culture, events and landmarks including the Puranapul, the oldest extant bridge across a river in India.
In May 1912, she brought out an anthology of her poems, The Bird of Time, which contained a tribute to Hussainsagar, then pristine with water as clear as a crystal. She had described the Hussainsagar, now a concoction of all pathogens and chemicals that are harmful to man, animal and environment, as a ‘living image of my soul’.
“I request… to inscribe this poem on Hussainsagar by Sarojini Naidu on a plaque and install it at a suitable place on Tank Bund,” Asif Ali Khan said, suggesting that a big gazebo should be erected to house the plaque with the poem on Hussainsagar engraved on it.
Landscape architect Sridevi Rao suggested that the poem should be chiselled in stone (to keep the memory of Sarojini Naidu alive forever).