Simaria, on the bank of the Ganga in Begusarai district, is honoured as the birthplace of Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’ (1908–1974) — the Rashtrakavi, “national poet”, whose thunderous verse (Rashmirathi, Kurukshetra) made him one of independent India’s most quoted writers and a Jnanpith laureate.
The village is also a riverside tirtha: Simaria Dham hosts a great Kalpvas fair each year, when pilgrims camp on the Ganga for a month of austerity. Poetry and pilgrimage together give this Begusarai village, on the southern edge of the Mithila plain, a name far larger than its size.