Noted Punjabi writer Amrita Pritam is no more

Amrita Pritam (born 31 Aug 1919, Gujranwala, Pakistan)- a person I have admired since my school days is no more. Eminent writer, brave woman and an excellent human being, she will be missed. She had been keeping bad health for the past few years. Author of works like Amrit Lehran (1936), Jinnda Jian (1939), Trel Dhote Phul (1942), O Gitan Valia (1942), Badlan De Laali (1943), Lok Pigr (1944), Pagthar Giite (1946), Punjabi Di Aawaaz (1952), Sunehray (1955), Ashoka Cheti (1957), Kasturi (1957), Nagmani (1964), Ik Si Anita (1964), Chak Nambar Chatti (1964), Jilavatan (1968), Raseedi Ticket (1976), Uninja Din (1979) and Kagaz Te Kanvas (1981). Winner of many awards including Sahitya Akademi Award (1956), Padmashri (1969), and Bharatiya Jnanpith Award (1981). Divorced in the early sixties she had been living with her companion Imroz. Imroz looked after her and nursed her through her illness right till the last moment of her life. Indian literature is poorer as we lost noted Hindi writer Nirmal Verma a few days ago.

The Class VIII Hindi text book published by NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) in the seventies had a chapter which was from one of her works and had been translated from the original Punjabi into Hindi. That was my introduction to Amrita Pritam and her work. As I belong to an army family I have heard first person accounts of partition from many friends and classmates whose parents went through those traumatic times. But it was in the translated works of Amrita that I really saw images of violence which made me shudder. Manto and Khushwant Singh have also written about partition but Amrita was a young woman in 1947 and the impact of seeing the violence which occurred then through the eyes of a woman is much, much more. Khushwant Singh has never been kind to her. But then those who know Khushwant and his likes and dislikes are not surprised. Her novel Pinjar which deals with partition was made into a Hindi film and a TV Serial. One feels sad when such an eminent person's innings on earth comes to an end. This is inspite of the fact that one knows that good writers never die, their works make them immortal.

Some links:
The sad passing away of Amrita Pritam:
Tribute in the weekly Outlook
Rediff.com
The Indian Express pays tribute
The Times of India
Sify.com
Uma Mahadevan-Dasgupta's tribute
Searching blogger for Amrita Pritam

Biographical links:
Entry in SAWNET
Poem and translation in chowk.com
Entry in punjabilok.com
Article in Life Positive magazine
Story published in The Little Magazine
Entry from the SAWNET database
Short Story Stench of Kerosene
Biographical note in Daily Times (Pakistan)
Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty's article in The Hindu (2002)
Article in Outlook when she was awarded the La Route des Indes Literary Prize of France
A tribute by the Sindh Research Council

Writer Nirmal Verma is no more

Wednesday 26 October 2005, 1130 hours IST, at a cybercafe:

Hindi Writer and novelist Nirmal Verma (born 3 April 1929, Shimla India) is no more. He will be known as one of the founders of the New Story (Nai Kahani) in Hindi Literature. A member of the Communist Party he had resigned his membership when the erstwhile Soviet Union had invaded Hungary. He had also opposed the Emergency declared by Mrs. Indira Gandhi during 1975-77. I am not a very voracious reader of Hindi literature but Nirmal Verma fascinated me. As a schoolboy I had found it a bit strange that somebody who studied English literature at St. Stephen's College Delhi should write in Hindi. (Correction: He was a student of history; thanks to nearly man and alok for correcting me) The time he spent in Czechoslovakia influenced his writings and he was fairly well known in East Europe. He had won every major literary award in India including the Jnanpith award and the Sahitya Akademi Award. I have read some of his work in the original Hindi and I found his prose to be exquisite. A few links to this eminent man of letters:

Newsitem in Rajasthan Patrika announcing Verma's demise
Brief biographical note from The Library of Congress, New Delhi Office
Biographical Note from the Lettre Ulysses Award site
Article from The Hindu on his Sahitya Akademi fellowship
Review from The Hindu of his works Indian Errant and The Last Wilderness
Short Story from Antara Dev Sen's The Little Magazine

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Thursday 27 October 2005; 0452 hrs IST, at home:
Avijit Ghosh's tribute to Verma in The Times of India.
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Later in the day 27 October:

Hindi poet Kailash Vajpayee's tribute to his friend in The Indian Express
A tribute to Nirmal Verma from the Chandigarh city supplement of The Indian Express
A tribute to Nirmal Verma from The Hindu
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Phalke Award for Adoor

Adoor Gopalakrishnan, one of Indian cinema's best directors was awarded the prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke award for 2004 by Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, the Prseidnt of India, at a ceremony held at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi on Friday 20 October. This is the rediff article on the event along with links to many rediff articles on Adoor. Worth looking at.

Predicting one's own death

Amit Verma's blog tells me of the story of an astrologer in Madhya Pradesh who predicted his own death. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) he turned out to be wrong. I remember a story I heard in Indore during the late eighties. I had just written a rather long computer program in the BASIC programming language for an astrologer. This program enabled him to do a series of complex calculatins in a jiffy. It also demystified the 'science' of astrology to me. It was clear to me that a good psychologist could become a good astrologer. All he had to do was to add terms related to astrology. Many of my friends and colleagues used this program to print out their astrological charts. But the astrologer was always puzzled that I hadn't asked him to predict my future. "I am just not interested," I had told him "kya aapney kabhi halwai ko mithai khatey dekha hai?" I had teased him. ("Have you ever seen a sweet shop owner eating sweets?") He had pretended he was amused and had laughed loudly. I remember telling this story to a group of friends. They had all laughed on hearing it. Then one of them told a story about a Maratha king (most probably a Holkar king from the family which ruled the central Indian state of Indore) who had invited an astrologer to his palace. When the astrologer arrived at the appointed time he was thrashed by the palace guards. He was then taken to the king. The king looked at him contemptuously and asked him "When you could not predict your own future how will you predict mine?" We had laughed loudly on hearing this story. The maharajas of yore could, and did, get away with murder.

Many years later I read writer and Sikh historian Khushwant Singh's account of the third battle of Panipat in which the Afghan Ahmed Shah Abdali's army defeated the Marathas who were fighting on behalf of the Mughals. According to Khushwant Singh the Marathas were militarily superior to the Afghan army but they waited for their royal priest, the Raj Purohit, to tell them the auspicious time to attack. Unfortunately for them their astrologer seemed to slip into some sort of paralysis and this gave Abdali's army the time to surround the Maratha camp and to cut off their supply lines. When they finally attacked it was a complete slaughter. The Marathas were starving and could barely scream out their battle cry of "Har, Har Mahadev" much less use their weapons. It was a complete rout as far as the Marathas were concerned. Astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar had once written an essay in which he had mentioned the fact that the Marathas were so sure of victory that they had even brought their women and children along with them as they had thought of going to various pilgrimage spots in the North after the battle was won. Many of these women were abducted by the Afghans. Every house in Pune had lost a member in this battle. Some of them were rescued by Sikhs. Khushwant Singh has mentioned that one of his female ancestors was a lady named Virabai. This is a Maratha name. She may well have been one of the ladies rescued by the Sikhs after the massacre at Panipat.

I had read these articles by Khushwant and Narlikar at a time when India's Education Ministry (the Human Resources Ministry) under the minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, who happens to be a physicist, was trying to introduce courses in Astrology in Indian Universities. This had happened a couple of years ago when the BJP was ruling India. A hue and cry had ensued. There were many who were impressed by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's statesmanship but were unable to understand why he gave a free hand to Dr. Joshi in matters of education. But then the compulsions of coalition politics in India are such that they produce strange bedfellows. I was one of the opponents of this scheme (I still am). I do not like crutches. And astrology is a crutch. I was also concerned with the fact that the Indian Army was (and still is) short of ten thousand officers. Our men were fighting jehadis in Kashmir and also guarding the Western and Northern borders with Pakistan and the long Himalayan border with China which stretches from Jammu and Kashmir till Arunachal Pradesh. It was a tough job and many of my friends who are in the Army would tell me "We could do with a few more subalterns."

If only Dr. Joshi had introduced some scheme with incentives which would have encouraged more university students to join the Army. I was scared that we had not learnt the lessons of the third battle of Panipat and were doomed to repeat history. I was also (still am) concerned with the fact that India has always had a big shortage of mental health professionals. Mental disorders are increasing. I hear horrific stories of stress breakdowns and road rage. We need more psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Look at what stress is doing to us. Instead of making students do courses in astrology our universities could make students of mathematics study how the calendars were made in ancient India. Strangely enough, almost a year ago I met Nachum Dershowitz, an Israeli mathematician from Tel Aviv, who is doing just this. His area of interest is "Indian Calendrical Systems" and he has written a detailed paper on this. Students of psychology can be made to analyse why astrology works, i.e. why people make a beeline towards astrologers.

Astrology is popular all over the Indian subcontinent. When the avuncular Bejan Daruwalla goes to Pakistan he is flooded with requests for appointments from the cream of Lahore and Karachi high society. And he continues to start each session with 'Shri Ganeshaya Namaha' - the invocation to Lord Ganesha. One can not miss the irony in the scene. A Zoroastrian whose ancestors left Persia centuries ago due to persecution by Islamic fanatics and settled in Gujarat happens to specialise in Hindu astrology. He goes to Pakistan and is flooded with requests to predict the future of the elite of this Islamic nation. Pakistan - a Muslim nation which is a breakaway part of India. It broke away because the elite of that nation did not want to live with their Hindu neighbours. But deep within they could not break away totally. They still believe in the power of Hindu astrology and in the skills of astrologers practising this art. Truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.

Astrology will continue to be popular in India. People will continue to go to astrologers. Thanks to technological innovations like TV Channels and the Internet astrologers and soothsayers will increase their earnings manifold. And many of these astrologers may themselves be patients of hypertension and anixety! Some of them will wrongly predict events including their own deaths. But let astrology remain astrology. There is no need to give it the garb of a science which it is not. And let us strive to make the next generation more logical and analytical in their approach to life and its problems. That, I think, would be much more beneficial than a trip to the fortune teller.

A meal cooked by the sun

"Would you like some rice?" my mother had asked me tonight. I had been about to say no when I had remembered how I had opened the glass lid of the solar cooker today afternoon at half past three. A very strong effluvia of boiled tomatoes had struck my nose. "One vessel contains tomatoes for a soup and the other rice" my mother had told me. I had opened each vessel in turn. The boiled tomatoes had smelt yum. And the rice was white and fluffy. She had kept these two blackened vessels in the solar cooker at about 12 noon and left them there without thinking about them. The sunrays had done the rest as they made the cooking compartment of the cooker very hot and boiled the vegetables and rice. Nothing gets burnt in this solar cooker my parents had bought in 1986. In the almost two decades that she has been using this cooker my mother must have saved quiet a lot of money as well as prevented burning fossil fuels like cooking gas. Peanuts get roasted very nicely. And as they are untouched by any flame they remain as white as they were when raw. I had once made tea by boiling water in this cooker. Just for fun. It had turned out very nice or maybe I made myself imagine it. She had once even baked my birthday cake in this. This was done after there had been a power failure which had meant that she couldnt use the electric oven. The old oven which she kept on the gas stove also collapsed so the cake went into its third cooker i.e., the solar cooker. It had come out so tasty that my mother felt sad that she hadn't noted the times it had remained in the two ovens. I have never eaten such a tasty cake ever since. But maybe I look at the past with what is called a 'soft focus'. But when all is said and done this is a real neat thing that we have in our house. I am thinking of presenting one such cooker to a family which can't afford to buy it but spends an awful lot of money on wood, kerosene and cooking gas. Even if they can cook a hundred meals a year on it there would be a very positive impact on the environment and their fuel bill. If I had been a schoolkid I would have ended this short note with a "I love my solar cooker, it is soooo nice." It really is. And I must tell you that I did have some rice tonight. It was really very tasty!

A hero battles for his life.

I was moved to tears when I read the story of Naik Raghubir Singh of the 2 Sikh Regiment. He had single handedly saved the lives of fifteen people who were buried under debris after the earthquake which struck J&K. He lost six of his equally brave colleagues who were with him on the rescue mission. He himself got struck in the head by a rock. This head injury has almost killed him. When I read about him he was battling for his life in the ICU of the Indian Army's 92 Base Hospital. He had been put on a respirator and his BP was almost nil. Let us pray that the valiant efforts of the Army Medical Corps team looking after him yield fruit and he survives. In this age of selfishness and cruelty we are lucky to have heroes like Raghubir Singh and his brave colleagues. Our jawans, airmen and sailors indeed keep us safe.
Read more about this brave man in this article from The Times of India.

Literature Nobel 2005 for Harold Pinter

The 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to Harold Pinter, the playwright, director, actor and political activist from UK. Here is the rediff article which informed me of this news. He also happens to be opposed to the West's military involvement in Iraq.("The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.")
I didn't know that he had also written the screenplay for films like The French Lieutenant's Woman. He has also played the role of a gangster in a Hollywood film and visited India as the member of a cricket team ("I tend to think that cricket is the greatest thing that God ever created on earth - certainly greater than sex, although sex isn't too bad either")

According to The Times (London) Pinter admits that politics may have played a role in his being awarded the Nobel. In post 9/11 2001 politics was supposed to have played a role in the award being given to Sir V.S. Naipaul. His plays were indeed hardhitting and laced with cynicism, anger and bitterness. I would never have predicted that he would one day win the Nobel. After the controversy regarding last year's award which was given to the Austrian novelist, playwright and poet Elfriede Jelinek we can expect another one this year. One can expect strong criticism from Asia and the Third World which may rightfully claim that they had better contenders for the world's top literary award. Nevertheless, Britain must be celebrating the award coming fairly soon as it does after V.S.Naipaul's 2001 award.
Some more links:
Click here for the official announcement from the Nobel Foundation. And here for Pinter's official site.The BBC newsitem announcing the good news for Britain. The article in the online edition of The Times and this is the link to the article in The Guardian (UK). Click here to read the article in The Telegraph. I came to know about the last three British links from aldaily.
Plenty of good reading.
p.s. Click here for some Harold Pinter quotes.

Sir Henry Neville - the real Shakespeare?

Who was the real Shakespeare? I have been reading articles about this since I was in a schoolkid. I remember that Christopher Marlowe, the young writer who was killed in a tavern brawl, has often been 'accused' of being the real Bard. Other contenders have been Francis Bacon and Edward de Vere. Today I read about Sir Henry Neville, a contemporary and distant relative of William Shakespeare, who is the latest contender. Shakespeare scholar Brenda James and historian William Rubinstein of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth claim in their forthcoming book The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare that Neville was the real bard. There is an article by David Keys in the issue dated Oct 5 2005 of The Globe and Mail . Interesting read.