Dwaraka

Dwarka, the legendary oceanic city of Lord Krishna, occupies a place of profound spiritual and narrative significance in Mahakavi Premanand's *Okhaharan*. As the divine abode from which Krishna reigns as king, it serves as the poem's celestial anchor — a city of unimaginable splendour against which the earthly world is measured and found wanting. Premanand, drawing on the Bhagavata Purana and regional oral traditions, renders Dwarka not merely as a geographical setting but as an embodiment of Krishna's sovereign glory and divine grace.

Throughout the poem, references to Dwarka carry emotional and devotional weight. When Aniruddha is abducted and held captive in Shonitpur, it is from Dwarka that the forces of rescue are marshalled, and it is to Dwarka that the longing of separated loved ones turns. Premanand's vivid, folk-inflected Gujarati brings the city alive with a warmth that makes it feel both cosmically grand and intimately familiar — a hallmark of his genius for translating mythological grandeur into the devotional idiom of everyday Gujarati life.