विभूतिमूर्ति

‘Wings on fire’

The Art of Himanshu Joshi

Mangal Murty

He joined both his palms together with a grimace of pain on his face and said to his son in a feeble voice that he would prefer to breathe his last in his own bed, rather than in the machine-congested  ICU of a multi-speciality modern hospital, not far from his modest flat in the Hindustan Times Apartments in Mayur Vihar, where the son wanted to take him for proper medical care. But finally he was spared that pitiful agony.

 The end came at half-past midnight, just as the date had changed to 23November, 2018.He had been ailing and on bed since 7 November, the Diwali day, when he had an accidental fall as the chair he wanted to hold on to had suddenly slipped. Though there was no fracture, but he had some injuries to nurse. And since that day he remained completely bed-ridden.

He had a history of heart complications, particularly for the last four years and had grown very weak and shrunken, refusing food most of the time. He had retired from the Hindi weekly Hindustan in 1993 after serving there for more than two decades, and since then was living in Delhi, where he had come for the first time in 1955 from a remote hilly area in the Kumaon valley of Uttarakhand. The village called Josyuda where he was born, on 4 May, 1935, lay in the district Champawat of Uttarakhand in the foothills of the Himalayas. He came from a farming family and his early childhood was spent in a nearby place called Khetikhan where he did his early schooling. His father, Poornanand Joshi, a committed Gandhian during the long freedom struggle, cast a deep influence on his personality as also on his creative literary career. Deeply rooted in an interior rural area, much of his fiction is suffused in its language and content by a regional sensibility, prominently reflected in the dialogues, habiliments and concerns of the rural characters in his novels and short stories.

After completing his higher education in Nainital, Himanshu moved to Delhi in 1955, where he did his M.Phil. from Delhi University.

 For years he had to struggle in Delhi doing tuitions and freelance journalism, writing scripts for Doordarshan and Akashvani, and publishing his short stories in journals, and writing novels. He served in the editorial department of the Hindi literary monthly Kadambini(1968-’71), and later in the popular Hindi weekly Saptahik Hindustan in which his famous novel Tumhare Liye was published serially. The novel was later published in book form in 1978. But even before that he had published 5 novels – Aranya      (1965), Mahasagar (1971), Chhaya mat chhoona Man (1974), Kagar ki Ag (1975) and  Samay Sakhsi hai (1976) – and 3 short story collections – Antatah & Other Stories 1965), Rathachakra 1975), Manushya-chinha & Other stories(1976). His prolific creative output during the nearly four decades of incessant writing adds up to nearly 3 dozen books: 8 novels, 17 short story collections, 2 travel accounts, 3 poetry collections, plus various memoirs and literary articles in journals; with some yet unpublished manuscripts awaiting publication.

Himanshu Joshi entered the literary scene with his short stories in the early 60s.’Antatah’, the title story of his first published collection is typical of his specialised genre of the short story which artfully delineates the regional milieu of the Kumaon valley deeply ingrained in his literary sensibility. This regional quality is a predominant trait of much of his fictional writing. The crises of the interface between the urban and the rural, and the socio-economic conflicts and tensions affecting a rapidly changing social life in the post-independence era mainly constitute his fictional world. In many of these early stories, and in much of his later fictional writing, this regional sensibility is foregrounded in the dialectal variety of language used in the dialogues and the choice and delineation of characters and events.

Himanshu Joshi’s fictional oeuvre spans over the post-independence decades and reflects nearly all the trends and changes in the contemporary genre of the short story. Commenting on his own craft of story writing, Himanshu Joshi has observed:

‘Often an idea would get stuck in your mind, and remains there, making you restive, and propelling you to give it a “local habitation and name” on paper. Though I don’t believe much in the craft involved in writing it. Mostly, it is a hazy thing at first that gradually coheres into its own shape, organizing its elements into a finished short story.’       

1.     

T   The Killers

By Himanshu Joshi

Straggling coconut trees – burning sand, and the sea stretching up to a vanishing horizon. The feet would dig in the hot sand and the soles would tingle in a tiresome manner. But even with an overhead sun, there is no perspiration. The whispering breeze blowing from the sea is rather refreshing. Standing on a strip of rocky land extending into the sea, there is a strange feeling – it’s all and only sea on every side.

The rock I sit on is washed by the sea on its three sides. I am all alone. The rock is like an elephant’s back – rugged, black and sloping on all sides. There is a red line drawn on the rock beyond which lies danger. You cross it and the waves might swallow you suddenly.

I take off my slippers to cross the red line – a few steps on the slope. Large waves keep crashing on the steely slopes with regular recurrence. A fold of water would slowly build up in the distance, swelling more and more and sweeping ahead towards the shore. Soon a white line would form as a wave, galloping forward as if touching the sky, and as it crashes against the rock with a roar, it would then break into froth – like milk slithering down the slope.

Crossing the red line gives me no fear. I lie down there on my back and watch the tiny black  boats of fishermen with their sails silhouetted like black dots against the horizon. Soon like a pencil sketch a faint image seems to emerge, gradually enhancing to shape up, one after another, into three steamers adavancing in a line.

Suddenly some noise seems to be approaching from behind – a group of about ten people is coming towards me. Rather surprised, I sit up.

They are dragging a frail, sick-looking person like a dog, with beards like dry grass, clad in dirty, skimpy, tattered clothes – his lips, elbows, knees bleeding. His eyes are soaked in dread, his body shaking all over, swaddled in terror.

A hefty tough-muscled man holds his scrawny neck in a steely grip and pushes it down – ‘Here, here …wasn’t it here?’. His body is convulsing all the more, eyes popping out in utter fright, froth oozing out of his mouth.

‘What’s the matter?’ – I get up in amazement.

‘What matter?...No matter!’ – the man wearing only a lungi says with a weird face, a thick layer of sandal paste on his forehead. The man by his side says – ‘He is a devil, a monster, not a human being!’

‘What d’you mean?’ I blurt out.

‘They say, yesterday he ate human flesh here!’ I shudder in disgust.

‘Yes, yes ! A child’s corpse was washed ashore here. Some say, this man was eating that corpse last night, sitting on this rock. This rascal, this demon. Yes he is a demon!’ – the man spat saying this. I keep staring into the red-hot eyes of the speaker, burning in anger. But looking around the place – I find nothing on the rock, no blood or shred of flesh or piece of bone. The very thought of a man eating human flesh is revolting to me. It makes me shiver.

‘Has anyone really seen it?’ I stutter in great dismay. But even before my sentence is complete, an animal-like person rushes forward through the crowd yelling – ‘Yeah, people have seen with their own eyes! But when they chased him, he just disappeared bolting past these rocks like a baboon!’

‘Why don’t you speak?’ – someone hit him hard on his head, and he sat there totally stunned in wooden silence. His eyes, swollen like soaked gram, are filled with timid feebleness.

Someone kicks him in his back and he rolls down like a coconut along the rock slope. His head is badly lacerated; two thin streaks of blood trickle down his nostrils to his lips.

‘Who saw him eating human flesh?’ – I nearly scream in exasperation and they suddenly fall silent. After an interregnum of silence a man comes forward holding the hand of a young man – ‘ His brother had seen…’ When I say : ‘But it could be someone else also?’ Pat comes the reply: ‘How’s that possible? Don’t we all know that it could be none else? It was he who drowned his father in the sea and killed his young wife! He is a living monster, an ogre!’, said the dark-skinned man with blazing eyes, grinding his teeth in fury.

Two or three of them are searching the area for remnants, across the rocky shore. I can’t understand their gibberish, but they are all in great excitement writ large on their faces. They are also rather frustrated for not getting anything as evidence. The man is taken around over a few more rock faces before being dragged away like an animal towards the ‘Gandhi-Mandap’; till they all disappear. I keep standing there stunned and nearly immobilised for some time; then sit there as before, and look around listlessly.

After a while I slip on my slippers and start walking back. A dark-skinned young man hanging a load of long strings of tiny white and brown shells and cowries on his right arm, is coming towards me, with only a lungi tied around his waist. ‘Two for the price of one, Sir!’ - he says, raising two fingers together. I keep walking not paying heed. But suddenly remembering something I turn back. The boy has meanwhile walked up the road, though still looking towards me; and when I return he again stands before me.

‘The man they were dragging around here – had he really done it?’ – I ask the boy.

‘Only God knows’, he says cryptically and stares on my face.

‘Had such a thing happened here before?’

‘No’.

‘But they thrashed him mercilessly’. And before I complete, the boy blurts out: ‘The poor fellow got his real drubbing first thing in the morning at the police station. With brutal kicks and sticks they nearly broke his bones. But he made no protests till he became senseless. When he couldn’t say anything, they left him alone taking him to be a lunatic. Would you buy my shell strings, Sir?’ – the boy said finally. And just to please him I buy one shell string.

In the evening the man is seen again hiding behind the massive rock at the back of the big temple. As soon as he sees me, he seems scared, and starts looking around for safety. The wounds on his body are still fresh, with blood congealed into red patches. His chin on his knees, he is staring with fear in his eyes. I walk to him and ask: ‘Do you want to eat?’

He keeps staring. Perhaps, he hasn’t understood. I join my all five fingers together and take them to my mouth to make him understand what I mean. His dimmed eyes suddenly fill with liquidity and a little spark.

‘Come with me’.

My words widen his eyes. I help him stand up, but his legs are doddering I somehow take him to a nearby street food joint and make him sit on a bench. A man comes and spreads a wet banana leaf and puts there a glass of water. But as this happens, suddenly a man comes running out, snatches away the banana leaf and pushes him out by the neck. He is sputtering out angry words in his dialect that are indecipherable. I can only guess that he is not using good words for me. His face turning red, his eyes burn like hot coal.

As soon as the man is thrown on the road, people pounce on him like hunting hounds. A small crowd of children and onlookers gathers round him. People are throwing banana peelings, coconut shells and pebbles on him. A hefty fellow drags him away by his arm like a carcass and casts him out of the habitation. I stand there open-mouthed.

I am sitting in an open restaurant outside the tourist lodge. A person, unknown to me, is sitting near me, waiting for someone. He tells me, he is a Hindi teacher in a Tamil school here. I speak to him about that man, but he makes a face looking at me. When I press him a little with persistence, I learn from him that the man is a local fisherman.

‘He has been a simple, humble being from his early childhood. His old father and his wife make his family. The father was of a choleric nature, though the wife was innocent and guileless like him. But as if it was a curse, God had made her stunningly beautiful, with their extreme poverty. As soon as the fisherman would go to the sea, the loafers would start buzzing around his tenement. The old father would abuse them, try to holler and chase them away, and when they left, he would go round the village calling them names….One day, in the darkness of night, the rowdies drowned the old man in the sea and rumoured around that the old man was killed by his son in a fit of madness. And on hearing this, the people in the village broke his boat into pieces, burnt down his hut, and drove him out of the village, making him a total outcaste.

‘The man had now to build a new hut on the outskirts of the village. And this was exactly what they wanted. Whenever he would go out for earning his daily bread they would forcibly enter into the hut and gang-rape his wife. The helpless, tortured wife committed suicide one day as a result of such brutal persecution. And once again the blame for the ‘murder’ was put on the mad man’s head. This is how the world goes.’

The man fell silent after his story.

Today is the last day of my travel. I have to catch the morning bus for Trivandrum. So till nightfall I want to roam about the place to my heart’s content. Alone I stroll towards the sea side. Against the sky, the swinging coconut trees look like a black charcoal drawing. On the lonely sandy pathway, there is no one to be seen anywhere. The moon is not yet up and the sea is all of deep black colour – almost like black varnish. But while coming back the slowly rising moon appears enchanting. Even the surface of the sea is glowing with its reflected yellow tint. I look at my watch to know the time. I start taking rapid strides towards my place of stay. I feel it unsafe to be out in darkness in an area fraught with danger.

As I walk down, I find myself near that same rock. And my eyes suddenly widen in awe – there is a shadow moving from side to side on that lonely rock. I get more curious and walk a little nearer – down the slope, a little further ahead.

I am now hardly a few yards from that rock when the shadow becomes sharper. My steps get slowed down and then stop at a point in fear. A skinny human shadow, looking all around in suspicion, raises both its arms like spread out wings, as if slowly rising in the air. Then it jumps like a baboon from rock to rock and disappears behind the rocks.

I hurriedly go there out of curiosity. As I cross the red danger line, suddenly a whiff of stench strikes me – I can see remnants of rotting fish all around.

[Translated by Dr BSM Murty]                       

2.      A story-writer’s journey

By Himanshu Joshi

When I look back it all appears unreal. As if the fifty-year long journey had started only yesterday. Does it all happen - as if in a day’s time? Perhaps, the impossible becomes possible. And you have the story of a writer’s journey swinging like a pendulum between the possible and the impossible.

I am talking of the days gone by. He was no different from what he is now – simple, very shy, hesitant and introverted, almost an ignoramus. His was the tragic story of a fatherless child in a joint family; with a distinct feeling of penury amidst plenty or plenty amidst privation. They said, he had lost his father even before he was seven. A father who was a freedom-fighter, an earnest follower of Gandhi; one who laid his life serving a cause for his country. And in course of that, a well-to-do family was reduced to utter indigence. Perhaps, it was something like adversity turning into a blessing or rather, the reverse.

I am about to tell that story – of one who was destined to do something. His hands would quiver. Painting; reading books; or spending hours in solitude. Lonely hours spent in scribbling – what, he would wonder, or why; and yet he would go on with it. He had just begun turning pages when he started composing verses of a kind. An ailment that would go on aggravating as he grew up. And in a short while the lines of his verses would go on lengthening. Even in examination time, he would continue writing verses. Sort of a craziness that would seize him for a long time.

When in Nainital, his teacher would dictate notes, he would be writing poems sitting on a back bench with bowed head. For this he was punished many times, but the habit would persist. Time, of course, cures all ailments. Like all other intoxications, this one also would leave him in time; but another would take hold of him: all the time some plot of a story would keep haunting him…. And that story-writing has gone on eversince.

[In his novel ‘Tumhare liye’ he wistfully remembers those days spent in Nainital.]

….Nainital, a strange, unknown place! I don’t even remember when it turned into my city, a city of my dreams. I remember only faintly – perhaps it was 1948, July. July 5, to be more precise. Almost 54 years ago!

From Haldwani, when I got down near ‘Lake Bridge’ from a roadways bus, a new world seemed to have opened before my eyes. There was a light drizzle. Big, dark clouds spread across the sky like a torn blanket! Clouds descending slowly down the ‘China Peak’ and ‘Tiffin Top’ into the lake. The hidden yellow sun occasionally peeping through the holes in them, and dazzling the eyes with its cool golden glow. As if a hide-and-seek game was going on between the sunshine, drizzle and the clouds, creating a magic world of dreams!

I got admitted into the college after two days, after a preliminary test, and felt I had achieved a goal in my life…!  I had come here with high hopes - about 60-70 miles away from my tiny village in the hills, a village slowly turning into a townshi. As if my whole future lay here. I wanted to study and do something in life. I had my golden dreams, but there were also endless mountains of challengesbefore me; so many of them. It was not easy for me to cross them.

Nainital then was very different. It was altogether a different place – a little England for the Englishmen, who had abandoned it barely a year back. All the good bungalows were still owned by them. Their children still filled all the English schools. And Nainital of those days was pristine in its natural beauty.

A cool green lake full of serene water! Deep green hills –  sunk almost up to their necks in the lake waters – seeing their own reflections in the lake! In the clean lighting at night Nainital would look like an amazing princess’ land. And it was here in this dream world that five years of my life were spent. Five Springs! And an equal number of Autumn -  but I never noticed them, even when they came.

Our hostel in the ‘Gurkha Lines’, the ascent of the ‘Craigland, the ‘Cheel Chakkar’, ‘Ladia Kanta’, ‘Talli Tal’, ‘Malli Tal’, the ‘Pines’, the ‘Mall Road’, the ‘Thandi Sadak’, the ‘Crossthwait Hospital’ – they had all been printed in my mind like the coloured, or partly coloured patches on a map ….

[In 1955, he finally came to Delhi, for pursuing a career in journalism.]

2.

Those were, indeed, days of a fire test. He was swinging between life and death. Wandering like a demented person on the hot, dusty roads in Delhi. Leaving a snowy mountain and a cold valley behind him, he had landed here in this hot, burning oven, with a shower of fire all around!

A totally unknown, unfamiliar metropolis. Or, perhaps, an endless city full of half-crazy people. Only a crowd of people all around, houses upon houses everywhere. A forest of houses and people in which he felt totally lost. Rambling around aimlessly on these crowded roads he was, as if, searching for himself. Without a roof over his head, and without a loaf of bread for his hunger. Totally dependent on himself, and yet carrying upon himself the burden of all his dependents. Filled with a sense of doing nothing, and feeling of guilt for evasion. He would always be restless, and yet there was a frenzy for achieving something in life. A few invisible rays of light would flicker in deep darkness. A faint illusion of a coming dawn inexorably, propelling him forward. Indeed, how could it be an endless night without a dawn?

Totally fatigued from a whole day’s ramblings when he would return to his relative’s one-room tenement, he would find deep darkness waiting for him. His relative was a factory labourer, living singly and mostly out for his night shift, which made breathing possible in that small, merely cot-wide room located in Bag Kade Khan, an unauthorized filthy slum area on the fringe of Delhi. Almost a fist-sized place for living, with only a half-torn sack-cloth-covered swinging door, unable to stop not only the dust and the wind, but also the sun and the smoke, and even rain showers. On nights when his relative had no night shift and would sleep on the cot, he would spend the night trying to sleep with folded legs in the narrow space beside the cot on the floor. And if it would rain on such nights, he would wake up in the morning fully drenched as if he had just come out wet from a pond. And yet in spite of all this, he loved that solitary space, that dark, humid room, as he would get some peaceful time there for his writing and reading. He would eat anything he could lay his hands on and drink his fill of water from the hand pump outside. Then he would take out the small round empty drum from beneath the cot, put his square tin box on its top and use it as a makeshift table. As no chair was available, he would sit on the side of the cot and spread his papers to start his writing.

He would write each story several times, till he felt satisfied. Every word should be clean and shining like a pearl: that’s what he aimed at, as he always did. He had spent many nights keeping awake in this way. But the landlord wouldn’t like it – his keeping awake for writing night after night. He was a milkman selling milk with several buffaloes in his premises. His complaint was that with the lights on for the whole night, his buffaloes won’t have enough sleep and their milk output had consequently gone down. This was a cause of great perturbation for him. And he would also say that he had let out the room for one person, and not for two. And he felt convinced, he was right.

But what would he do if not loiter around during day time and write during the nights? He could see no shore for his sea of troubles.

3.

Only one tuition; and only for one month. How much he’ll get, that also is uncertain. For living, food, etc he was totally dependent on his friend. Days were only passing by somehow! Writing stories, He would often feel, he himself was like a character in the stories he was writing. That hurt him much.

They were torrid summer days. And Daryaganj was 13-14 miles from Bag Kade Khan locality of Kishanganj. He had to walk from one end to the other for doing that tutition and that took him almost the whole day. Though the train ticket from Kishanganj to old Delhi railway station would cost only an anna, but that, too, was not a small sum for him in those days.

He had an audition at ‘Akashvani’ on that day. He thought he would go there via Daryaganj. He had seen Jainendraji’s nameplate one day as he was walking along the road in Faiz Bazar. He thought why not meet him today. He was equal to anyone for that matter, he thought; even though nothing he had written had yet been published anywhere. Jainendraji would sit in his ‘Rishi Bhawan’ office during day time. When he met him, after some formal chit-chat on the life philosophies of Tolstoy and Romain Rolland, he rose to take leave. In his hand he had a roll of papers. Jainendraji asked casually: ‘Have you written something?’

‘Oh, nothing much. Last night I was just writing…’

‘Is it a story?’

He laughed and said : No, no, nothing like a story. Just something…’

Then Jainendraji read it and said: ‘Really, it’s a good story! Have you been to the “Nav Bharat Times” office? It’s nearby. Give it to Akshay, and ask him to phone me.’

He sent the story to Akshayji through the peon, but he didn’t mention it was sent by Jainendraji. He had his own queer principles since his birth. It could be seen as his self-respect, or even his ego which he always carried with him. But what writing could you do without having this feeling of self-respect? And that’s, perhaps, why he never asked any established writer to write a preface to his books. Nor ever did he feel the need for a word of appreciation to be printed on the flaps of his books. And he certainly never attached any importance to certificates and testimonials of merit, nor ever cared to preserve them. Even today he finds any certificates of honour rather amusing!  A ‘Padmashri’ or ‘Padmabhushan’ – framed elegantly and hung up prominently on the wall of a friend’s home makes him wonder –does a writer really need such testimonials of honour?

 4.

One day. Early morning, Sunday. When he went for a cup of tea to the nearby street shop, he found a spreads-eagled sheet of the day’s newspaper on a dirty wooden bench with flies buzzing all around. His saw his story printed there. His first story published in a newspaper in 1956. He decided he would rather buy a copy of that newspaper from a nearby stall than have his cup of tea with that money; the only money that he had with him at the moment.

And thus began the journey with that first story which then went on and on. That year, his story got the ‘first prize’ in an annual ‘story competition’ organized in Delhi. He got the prize again the next year. He was asked to submit his story again for the third year, but he refrained deliberately. What’s the fun if the same person gets the prize every year….

He was fortunate in matters of his creative writing and its publication. Honours and accolades also came on a regular basis. His first short story collection ‘Antatah’ (‘Finally’) was published in 1965 which went into a dozen editions in course of time. His novel ‘Aranya’(‘Forest’) was also published in the same year which earned the ‘Premchand Puraskar’ from the ‘Uttar Pradesh Hindi nSansthan’. Then came several collections – ‘Rath Chakra’(Chariot’s Wheel), ‘Manushya Chinha’ (‘Sign of Man’), ‘Jalte Hue Daine’ (‘The Burning Wings’), etc; each going into several editions, and translated into almost all Indian languages as well as –with many of these stories translated into world languages like English, Nepalese, Burmese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Check, Slav, Norwegian, Italian, etc. Some of the stories were also made into films or radio broadcasts, or into theatre. Some were even prescribed in university courses. But he always felt, it must be all due to his readers’ generosity or affection; because he knew he hadn’t written anything so far that was truly valuable.

Writing for him had only been a means of liberation from an agony. He couldn’t live, if he had not been writing. What to do then? He never saw his characters as different from his self. It was in their laughter that he laughed; in their suffering, he suffered. The death of a character would be an adumbration of his own death. He had had that feeling ever since he wrote his first story; a feeling of involvement that never left him.

When that first story was published, a close friend had said to him: ‘Ever since my ailing wife has read your story, she has left all hope of living. Like the broken tip of a thorn stuck in her consciousness, she has felt convinced that she would have an end similar to that of the character in your story.’

Oh, my God! As if he fell on his face from the sky. Can a story have such a pernicious effect? He couldn’t even imagine. He always tried to believe that a story was just a story. Can one even think of events in a story to ever happen in real life? Would it be rational? What a writer imagines as happening in a story – can it ever happen exactly like that in someone’s life?

He would argue with himself; but somewhere deep within himself it would seem that what appeared so true, perhaps, may not be true after all. Indeed, a story is a story insofar as it may as well be equally true. Whatever happened in a story – why can’t it happen somewhere in real life, too? After all, what happens in a story must have a basis in real life! From that day, he decided, he won’t write anything that would generate despair or hopelessness. Literature is meant to create life, not to create the shadow of death. But he never could make sure how far he had succeeded in abiding by that resolve!

Today, after his short sojourn with the story, whenever he starts writing a story, he feels the same diffidence, the same hesitation: would the story turn out to be good enough? He has seen many literary trends in short story writing pass by; has written on urban living as much as on rural life; and, of course, he has written much about human relationships; has even made all kinds of experiments in story-writing – abstract stories, fantasy stories, and so on.

He was so fortunate to get so much in life that he had aspired to, in spite of all the struggle he had to face. Had received boundless love of his readers, which meant so much for him. And he had done so much writing by now – novels, short stories and what not. But he knows full well that he hasn’t yet written what he always strove to write. His writerly life, he truly feels, has just begun. Even the preface is not yet complete. But with more than two thirds of life gone, shadows of life’s evening seem to him to be lengthening…

                 [Translated by Dr BSM Murty From a preface to a collection of his stories: 2012]

3.      

      Himanshu Joshi’s short stories

By Upendra Nath ‘Ashq’

Reading a selection of Himanshu Joshi’s short stories was a pleasant surprise. I liked specially two of his stories that I had read in an earlier collection, but they had left no lasting impression on me. They were stories one likes while reading but forgets them with the passage of time. And that may be also because their titles were rather dodgy. Because the titles immediately don’t help recall the content of the stories. For instance, the title ‘Manushya-Chinh’ (Identity of Man) doesn’t fully help in remembering the story, even though it is a fine story having a significant blend of pain and joviality in its narration. ‘Gobindi’, I think, would have been a more appropriate title – Gobindi:the character who is central to the theme of the story and fully represents a poor, illiterate, helpless and vulnerable person in that story.

The other story ‘Jalte Hue Daine’ (Burning Wings) shows that repression of voices of revolt took place not only during the British times, but continued unabated even in the post-independence establishment. And once again, in this story, the title seems to have little relevance to the theme or the events narrated in the story. That’s why – because their titles provide no clues to the content -  I realized only on reading them again that I had read them before. They aroused in me once again the same feelings of helpless anger as they had when I had first read them – that even after 30 years of our own government, nothing has been done for the poor. The rich have become still richer and the poor, landless farmers and labourers have fallen on worse days, and the voices of revolt are crushed with the same severity as during the British days.

But besides these two stories there are other stories in the selection that need not be re-read for a recall. Even on their first reading they deeply imprinted themselves in memory. The writer has divided his stories into three groups – 1. Stories related to contradictions inherent in the establishment, 2. Stories dealing with human relationships, and 3. Stories of socio-economic strife. But such a division seems rather unconvincing insofar as none of the stories actually seems devoid of human relationships. Because the characters in all these stories are human beings, their actions, relationships – good or bad, wicked or hypocritical – must all be seen as basically human in nature. Also, in all of them, the society or the establishment is always present in an apparent or covert manner. I shall, therefore, on the basis of those stories which I especially like, divide them into three different groupings.

These are, first, the stories with stark realism suffused with sharp satire; be it against the establishment, or the individual or the society itself. Four of such stories I liked best: ‘Koi ek Masiha’ (One such prophet), ‘Admi zamane ka’ (Man today), ‘Nai Bat’ (New Idea) and ‘Swabhav’ (Human nature). Among these ‘Admi zamane ka’ is a story full of humour and satire which reminds me of Markandey’s ‘Adarsh Kukkut Grah’ and of the ‘Babu Ramdeen-Bhikham-Khedwi’ episode in Shrilal Shukla’s ‘Rag Darbari’. In all of them the content is mainly based on people taking undue advantage of government schemes; but among the three examples cited, Joshi has achieved his effect with sharper clarity and biting castigation than the two others. ‘Koi ek Masiha’ presents the satirical character of a corrupt, wily political leader who manages to procure grants from government for the rehabilitation centres for poor female inmates who ultimately serve as grist to his lecherous mill. ‘Nai Bat’, the other story, depicts the sinister changes that are rapidly taking over the villages with the coming of new roads, schools and block offices. In ‘Swabhav’ we are faced with the ironies of everyday life in the towns in a story where the protagonist brings his wife’s sister to nurse her in her illness and starts a sexual affair with her. Though ultimately the sister reveals all to her sister, the protagonist’s wife. However, in my view, a much better title for the story would have been ‘Gilahari’ (Squirell).

The second type of stories are highly appealing love stories, imbued with gentle romance and sentimentality. Of them, I would prefer to select two – ‘Chhoti E’ (Small E) and ‘Baras Beet Gaya’(The Year that is gone). The former is a deeply moving story that tells of a girl who loves a boy much younger than herself and remains unwedded in her life. The latter also is a beautiful love story in which the girl loves a military youth, Lieutenant Anant, who gets killed on the war-front and the girl also dies in grief.

The third type is of stories that deal with the socio-economic crises of human existence and the contradictions underpinning the social system that affect individual lives. Of these. I found three especially outstanding: ‘Likhe hue Shabd’(Written Words), ‘Apne hi kasbe me’   ( In One’s own village) and ‘Antatah’ (Ultimately); and of them I found the last to be the finest. In fact, if I were to name the most successful among all the stories in the collection, it would be no exaggeration to say that the story ‘Antatah’ is out and out the best. Though once again I would like a change in the title - ‘Birju’ or ‘Birju Paglet’ should be a preferred title.

It’s my habit to read a story which I like, twice or thrice; as I did with ‘Antatah’, too. And each time I liked it more than before. The writer in this story, through the character of a demented boy, had satirized the paradoxes and inconsistencies in the establishment, delineated the oppression and miseries of the poor, and laid bare the resultant simmering revolt in society. And through such sensitive delineation, he has given expression to the prevailing human distress and suffering in society. In a recent radio discussion on ‘The Lagacy of Premchand’ I had referred to this story as a worthy milestone in that literary legacy. My observation then may have caused some sniggers, but while writing this review, as I read this story again, I found in it a strong influence not only of Premchand but also of Sharat Chandra – noticing in it the stark realism of the former and the compassionate emotionalism of the latter, suffusing the story as a whole. I do consider Joshi’s ‘Antatah’ as one of the finest short stories in Hindi.

HImanshu Joshi has not been my favourite short story writer. In the post-60s generation of short story writers, my favourites have been Doodhnath Singh, Gyan Ranjan, Kalia, Mahendra Bhalla, Ramesh Bakshi and Yatri. But for some reason or the other, all of them seem to have fallen silent after attaining their summit. As a result, I’ve now nearly stopped reading short stories altogether. Also because we no longer have such magazines where in almost every number you could get at least one short story that was truly great. Now for reading one good short story, you must trudge through ten trashy ones. And yet literature has its own intoxication like booze. Once addicted to it, you can’t get away from it. Of necessity then, you have to read the young writers, too. Hence, I chose to buy short story collections rather than read the stories in various magazines.

And I am happy, I made a wise decision. I have read Joshi, the master of the short story, with a new perception and a novel sensibility. In these stories he has consistently excelled wherever he has been true to his roots in his rural home surroundings in the Uttarakhand region, with all the diversity of its rural characters, though he has also failed whenever he has exceeded his limits when he tries to be fashionable or experimental. I wish he remains cognizant of his limitations as also of his extraordinary talents; and would explore more of his rural moorings, with a sharper eye for more content-related titles for his short stories which would register his stories more deeply on the minds of his readers. I also wish that he would continue to aim higher and higher and produce still greater short stories.                            

                           

                                [Translated by Dr BSM Murty from an unpublished preface to the stories]

[Published in Indian Literature (No. 309, Jan-Feb, 2019) by Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi]

© BSM Murty

Photos : Courtesy Google Images

Other Important blogs you may like to see here:

2010 : Sahitya Samagra : 5 Oct / 2011 : On Premchand: (26 May) / Has Hindi been defeated by English? : Shivpujan Sahay : (7 Dec) / 2012 : Memoirs on Prasad and Nirala : (25-26 Oct)/ 2013 : Sheaf of Old Letters (10 Oct) / 2014 :  Shivpujan Sahay Smriti Samaroh:( 27 Jan) / On Amrit Lal Nagar: (18 Aug)/ On Bachchan : (27 Nov) / 2015 : On Renu: (3 Mar) / On Trilochan: (1 Apr) /Odes of Keats + Shantiniketan: (25 May) / Premchand Patron Men: (3 Aug)/  Suhagraat: Dwivediji's poem: (13 Nov)/ 2016 : Three stories of JP:(6 Jul) / On Neelabh Ashk: (24 Jul)/ / Dehati Duniya: (8 Aug)/  Anupam Mishra: Paani ki Kahaani :(Dec 25) /   2017 :  Doctornama: memoirs of Shivpujan Sahay (July 10):  On Prithwiraj Kapoor (Nov 6) / Rajendra Jayanti Address @ Bihar Vidyapeeth, Patna (Dec 14)/ 2018:हिंदी नव जागरण, शिवपूजन सहाय  और काशी           (1 Mar)/Tribute to Kedar Nath Singh (25 May) /  राहुलजी और हिंदी-उर्दू-हिन्दुस्तानी का सवाल (12 Jun)/ Neelabh Mishra (16 Jun)/ Death of Shivpoojan Sahay(17 Jun) / बाबा नागार्जुन (1 Jul)/ On Kedarnath Singh (with full translation of ‘Tiger’, 15 July)/Five poems of Angst (14 Aug)/चंपारण सत्याग्रह : भारतीय राजनीति में सत्य का पहला प्रयोग (26 Nov)  2019: On Kamaleshwar’s stories collection: ‘Not Flowers of Henna’ (26 Jan)/ Why Gandhi was killed (30 Jan)/

Extracts from my biography of Dr Rajendra Prasad

Some extracts from my forthcoming biography of Dr Rajendra Prasad are also available on this Blog (Scroll by year and date), plus some other articles on him.

2011:  The Indigo Story (28 May) / A Planter’s Murder (17 Jul) / The Butcher of Amritsar (July 18) / 2014:  The Seven Martyrs, The Last Act, The Pity of Partition, Lok ewak Sangh (14 Sep) /  Early childhood in Jeeradei ( 3 Dec) /   2015:  Congress in disarray, Swearing of First President (30 Jun) / 27: Clash of Convictions: Somnath (27 Aug) / Presidential Itineraries ( 8 Oct) / Congress at crossroads             ( 20 Dec)  2016: Election for Second Term (15 Mar) /  Visit to Soviet Union (13 May) / Limits of Presidency, Code Bill (24 Aug) /  The Last Phase (28 Aug)   2017:   Dr Rajendra Prasad: On Kashmir Problem ( 12 Jul) / The Swearing in of Dr Rajendra Prasad (24 July) / Remembering Dr Rajendra Prasad (Patna Univ Centenary) (15 Oct) / Dr Rajendra Prasad & Bihar Vidyapeeth (14 Dec) 2018 : A Book is born (on the newly published biography of Dr Rajendra Prasad)

 You may also visit my Hindi blog –

vagishwari.blogspot.com mainly for Hindi articles on Shivpoojan Sahay, and my translation of Shrimad Bhagawad Geeta, Ramcharit Manas and Durga Saptshati ( retold).

All matter and photos, unless otherwise indicated, are © Dr BSM Murty.

My new address : Dr BSM Murty, H-302, Celebrity Gardens, Sushant Golf City, Ansal API, Lucknow:226030. Mob. 7752922938 & 7985017549 Email:bsmmurty@gmail.com