Book 246: Punjab (English) – Saintly Sinner = Pavitra Paapi (Nanak Singh)

The day went by, and night enveloped the world in its dark blanket. As time passed, the storms raging inside Kedar gathered strength. He could no longer see anything inside the room. His mind was spinning out of control, like a twig adrift in a whirlpool. Caught in the vortex of a swift and powerful current, he drifted for hours until he reached a place that is beyond the pale of intelligence or reason, where the overpowering torrents choke the human spirit before contemptuously tossing it aside as unconscious or half dead, where the boundaries between man and beast begin to merge, where the distinctions between friends and strangers, between truth and fiction begin to evaporate.

 

We haven’t been to Asia for quite a while; since I was reading in population order, and the countries and even territories are very populous, I got through them quite a while ago. Since Punjab is one of the most populous places that isn’t independent but that many would like to be (and simply because I love literature from the Subcontinent so much), this is an excuse to have a trip back to Asia.

Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan in the bloody split and independence in 1947. (Punjab suffered perhaps more bloodshed and dislocation from this than any other part of India, since the arbitrary boundaries drawn suddenly left millions of people on the ‘wrong side’ according to their religion. Read Freedom at Midnight by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins for this amazing story). Now it forms a state in both countries, with a Muslim majority in Pakistan, and a Sikh majority and large Hindu minority in India. The Punjabi language, again one of the most spoken in the world, is also split in its written form: Arabic script in Pakistan, Gurmukhi script in India (a Sikh script related to Hindi, etc.) Since India is a majority Hindu nation, and there seems less room for other religions under BJP rule, many Sikhs would like to create their own homeland in Punjab (which they would call Khalistan).

In 1984 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered a military operation to oust militants from the Sikhs’ holiest site, the Golden Temple, in Amritsar. Two of her Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in revenge. The Indian government has recently been accused by Canada and the US of having assassinated and of wanting to assassinate (respectively) Sikh separatists living in their countries. An organisation called Sikhs for Justice (banned in India) has been holding unofficial referendums for independence among the Sikh emigré communities, e.g. in the UK, Canada, Australia and this month in the USA.

Anyway enough background, on to my Punjabi book. It took quite a while to find a suitable one – there are lots in English, but they all seemed to be written by Punjabis living in the UK, Australia, etc.! Many thanks to my friend Raj for suggesting the poet, songwriter and ‘father of the Punjabi novel’, Nanak Singh. A popular Hindi film was made of Saintly Sinner.

The story takes place in the 1930s (that is, in the British Raj, before Partition). I guess you could say it’s a story about dharma, the need to try to do your duty (which may be impossible when your duties clash). The hero (Kedar) is always trying to do the right thing, but gets drawn deeper and deeper into a morass of lies and deception. Yet there is no ‘original sin’ he commits that would make us feel he deserves his sad fate. It’s just the way life turns out. In a way it’s as tragic as Romeo and Juliet.

It starts when Kedar gets a job with a watchmaker, inadvertently replacing Panna Lal who then disappears for the span of the story, leaving his abandoned family in a deep debt that they didn’t know about. Kedar is a good person and feels bad about what had happened, and he takes responsibility for this family. He comes to be loved and trusted by them, and the feeling is mutual – he especially comes to romantically love the eldest sister, Veena, though it’s hard for him to act on this since he has effectively become her brother. (She calls him Bharaji, which I think is ‘brother’ with an honorific -ji ending). Although he wishes it was himself, when Veena is promised to someone else in marriage he honourably accepts responsibility for raising her dowry for the greedy in-laws (since the family can’t afford it themselves), though he can’t afford it either. Veena herself is still too young to sort out her feelings, she has to suddenly see her relationship with Kedar in a totally different light but doesn’t have time to work out what to do, even if she was allowed to decide her own fate. She seems too dazed or powerless to care which of the prospects she would really want to be married to. All this leaves Kedar too in a despairing mood.

Kedar has been deceiving the family that Panna Lal hadn’t in fact lost his job but had been sent away for business, and was still writing them letters via himself, Kedar (who actually wrote them himself). For me it was a bit hard to believe that all this time the family didn’t ask for their father’s address, from either Kedar or the watchmaker. 

The translation from Punjabi looks fluent and the tale is easy and pleasurable to read. The story is a little melodramatic and elements seem a little unbelievable, but it’s very touching and a great story. It’s heartbreaking following two good people trying to do the right thing but being constantly unfairly battered on the seas of fate. It’s a bit Sophoclean in that you feel that people trying their best shouldn’t be put in tragically impossible scenarios. But (sometimes) that’s life.

 

Nanak Singh (1897 – 1971), Saintly Sinner, translated by Navdeep Suri [his grandson], New Delhi, Amit Bhatia for A’N’B Publishers, 2003, ISBN 9788175390294

Book 185: Sikkim (English) – The Fragile Thread of Hope (Pankaj GIRI)

The sight of the landscape was breathtaking. It seemed as if they had gained the highest peak of Gangtok. the range of mountains visible towards the west felt insignificant. The farther away the mountains were, the more their colour seemed to drop from green to blue and then lighter shades of blue. Dark clouds looming above the hilly horizon were on the verge of swallowing the setting sun. Droopy branches of cherry blossom trees hung over the narrow pathway like a natural roof. A small Tibetan-style shed stood overlooking the string of cowering hills. She found herself walking towards it. She clung to the cemented railing and took in the spectacular panorama. A chilly gust flirted with her hair.

This is a novel with a series of disasters and romances in two families, linked by a fragile thread of hope. From childhood, Soham blames himself for his brother’s death. Fiona has survived a horrible childhood to find her lover. But both are hit by tragedy (the story begins with a dramatic car crash) and it is an immense struggle for both of them to recover and love again..

Although it is set in Gangtok, Sikkim (and in Bangalore), it is a novel of the Nepalese community there and I could have wished to learn a bit more about Sikkim. (The majority of people in Sikkim are now Nepalis). Maybe Sikkimese culture is not so prominent since the Indian takeover? The characters are generally addressed by their Nepali kinship terms rather than their names, which was a bit hard for me to remember. The skipping back and forth through time was initially a little confusing (as it often is for me).

The novel explores the themes of coincidence, love, guilt, dealing with trauma, alcoholism, religion, and above all, hope. Hope is what makes us survive, but optimism is what makes us humans progress. While I wouldn’t call it a “literary masterpiece” (as does one of the quotes in the back cover blurb), it was an enjoyable read.

Giri, Pankaj, The Fragile Thread of Hope, New Delhi, Fingerprint Passion, 2019, ISBN 978 93 8956 720 5

Book 74: Kashmir (English) – The Collaborator (Mirza WAHEED)

 

Captain Kadian takes a large swig from his glass tumbler, closes his eyes for a moment, smacks his lips, and says, ‘The job’s not that hard, you see, you just go down once a week or fifteen days, and the money, the money is not bad at all.’

 

This novel is set in Indian Kashmir, near the ‘Line of Control’ with Pakistan. Kashmir isn’t an independent country (though you suspect most Kashmiris might want it to be). When India and Pakistan gained independence, the Muslim-majority state was ruled by an indecisive Hindu maharaja who opted for India at the last moment. Open and covert warfare between Pakistan and India, and Kashmiri militants, for decades has been the consequence. Both countries claimed the state and occupy it (India the majority). India promised an independence referendum at the outset, that has never been held. Some sixty years later, no solution is in sight. The lovely valley is perhaps the world’s most likely flashpoint for a nuclear war.
In ‘The Collaborator’, brutal, drunken Indian Army Captain Kadian gives a marvellous self-justification for his actions, going through the full catalogue of rationalisations with which such people kid themselves (only). It’s their own fault that atrocities occur, can’t be helped, just part of his job, I’m just a tiny cog in the machine, it’s the law, those who whinge about human rights don’t understand, I have a family too, I didn’t kill them myself, they chose to die, it would have happened anyway, even if I agreed I couldn’t do anything.
He forces the boy narrator to ‘collaborate’ and count the fallen corpses in the typically beautiful Kashmir valley on the border (a job he considers too dangerous for his own soldiers); every day he expects to find one of his boyhood friends who had gone across to Pakistan to join the militants.
The high point is the visit of the Governor of Kashmir, who helicopters in as if on a military operation, humiliating the villagers (who had been warned by an azan ((Muslim call to prayer)) recited backwards), like the preparation for a massacre instead of a ‘hearts and minds’ campaign.
There are a lot of Kashmiri, Arabic and Hindi/Urdu words used, but unfortunately no glossary is provided and they are not always explained.
Although he is speaking of his scavenging expeditions, when the Collaborator says he is tired of it all he must be speaking for most Kashmiris.

 

WAHEED, Mirza (1955 – ), The Collaborator, London, Viking, 2011, ISBN 978-0-670-91895-9

Book 2: India (English) – Godan = गोदान (PREMCHAND)

His entire crop gone in payment of the fine, Hori passed one month on the meagre stocks he had somehow scraped together. But with the beginning of June the situation became desperate: five mouths to feed and not a crumb in the house. Already heavily in debt, another loan was ruled out. Nor could he take up work as a hired hand: his own cane crop now under irrigation claimed all his time. The irony of it! Even to do his own work, his body first needed food.

I chose this one as it was recommended to me in an Indian bookshop as the greatest novel in Hindi (perhaps the only great novel?) To tell the truth I found it rather hard to get into, compared with all the wonderful imaginative novels that Indians are writing in English, some of which are among my very favourite works. It is set in rural India and details the hero’s family’s endless misfortune and battles with the ugly, exploitative landlord class. I found it hard to connect with this milieu, but it is definitely worth reading to grasp the oppressed, unfair life of Indian peasants. Even so, it’s a mystery to me why Hindi is apparently so neglected by its own writers. Its place is in films and songs, but where are all the novelists? Writing in English, apparently! Or just not translated?

PREMCHAND (1880-1936): Godan: a novel of peasant India, translated by  Jai Ratan & P. Lal, Jaico Publishing House, Mumbai, 2002, ISBN 9788172242190

(originally published in Hindi, गोदान, 1936)