Tarauni is a farming village in the Benipur block of Darbhanga district, Bihar, in the heart of Mithila. It is the family village of Vaidyanath Mishra (1911–1998), the bilingual Hindi and Maithili poet known the world over as Nagarjun — the Janakavi, or “People’s Poet.” He began in the early 1930s writing Maithili verse under the name Yatri, and went on to become one of modern India’s most fearless political poets.
Though Nagarjun was born at his mother’s village of Satlakha (in present-day Madhubani district), Tarauni was his paternal home and the place most closely identified with him; he lived his later years in the Darbhanga region and died nearby in 1998. The 2011 Census recorded the village at about 2,300 people across roughly 490 households, with its own gram panchayat.
The everyday language is Maithili, and the village is cherished by admirers of Nagarjun as a place of literary pilgrimage. Beyond its association with the poet, it remains a typical agrarian settlement of the Darbhanga plain.
