Chilika Development Authority

Chilika is an integral part of the culture of coastal Odisha. Almost 400 years ago, the saint poet Purshottam Das, a devotee of Lord Jagannath, wrote a poem about Lord Krishna dancing with a milkmaid called Maniki, who had come to sell curds on the banks of the Chilika. Even today, a village Manikagauda (gauda being the cowherd caste) stands on Chilika lagoon. More recently, the great Oriya poet, Radhanath Rai, fascinated by the beauty of the lagoon, wrote an epic poem Chilika which is regarded as a masterpiece of descriptive geography. The freedom fighter Gopababdhu Das (know as Odishas Gandhi), in his book Bandir Atmakatha (Autobiography of a prisoner), wrote eloquently about Chilika viewed from a train traveling along its banks in the 1920s.