“Ghalib sareer-e-khaama nava-e-sarosh hai (Ghalib, the sound of the pen scratching paper is the singing of angels)”
The “grande dame” of Hindi literature, Krishna Sobti, is a path-breaking novelist who made a significant contribution to Hindi literature while dealing with bold themes like female identity dysphoria and sexuality. She has widely enriched Hindi literature with her unique and undaunted style of writing and has been the recipient of a number of coveted awards in the past. One among them is the Sahitya Akademi Award (1980) for Zindaginama, an account of rural life in a village in Punjab, in the early 1900s which addresses the intricacies of social and political concerns of the time. The recent addition to this list is the Janinpth Award,2017, for her contribution to Hindi literature.
Born in Gujarat, Pakistan, Sobti returned to India when Partition took place. Living a transient life illuminated her writings and made her more empathetic to human emotions. She started off with poetry and later took to fiction. Her sense of transience is reflective in her valiant characters which share a vision to metamorphose the society into a more conscientious one. Her works capture myriad emotions of mankind and reflect the beauty of literature in unparalleled ways. Sobti’s writings lay emphasis on subjects like Partition, independence, sexuality, the relationship between man and woman and masculinity. While dealing with issues of sexuality and feminity, Sobti refrains from being labelled as a “women’s writer” as she staunchly believes that a perfect text strives to maintain a balance between masculine and feminine elements. The long list of Sobti’s work includes Daar Se Bichchuri, Surajmukhi Andhere ke, Yaaron ke Yaar and Zindaginama. She is also credited for writing poignant short stories; Channa, Sikka Badal Gaya, Lamma , Nafisa, to name a few. several of her works have been translated into other Indian languages and also in Swedish, Russian and English. Beginning from 1960s, Sobti has also written a number of stories under her masculine pseudonym, “Hasmat” which has been immensely applauded by critics. Through her touch, she turned Hindi literature into gold.
The language used by the writer bore imprints of her influence from Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi cultures and thus these three are knotted together to form her own unique and distinct writing style.Her writing has the ability to combine novelistic details with a poetic touch even without being abstruse. The primary source for her writings remains human lives and experiences. Her writings are not based on a lot of research as she believes in following her own sense of time and space. It is emanating from this view that for her work Daar se Bichudi (Separated from the Flock), published in 1958, set in pre-Partition India, and concerned a child born from a marriage that crossed religious and social boundaries, the sight of Chillianwala battlefield was all the information that she desired( as she mentioned in Sobti-Vaid Samvad).
Sobit believes in creating an equilibrium with her characters. According to her, both too much or too little proximity from the character is a barrier to writing a profound piece of writing. While the former leads the writer to create a mirror image of oneself, the latter obstructs the writer from empathising with its character. Her works demonstrate a certain degree of ambivalence as they include both the unique ideas of the writer along with the ordinary aspects of the set up of time and that they are written in. In one of her interviews, she has very vividly stated that an author should give enough time and space for its characters to grow. It is probably reflecting from these ideas that her writings along with being mirrors of her time, illustrate the immortality of classic texts.
Being a budding writer at a time when English literary writing was reaching its pinnacle, very few writers were driven by the patriotic resolution of widening the horizons of Hindi literary writing.
Krishna Sobti was particularly attracted to Hindi as it has a unique dhwani sansar (auditory world), captured from various dialects from across the world. Sobit says that “ My creative world carries the memory of various Hindi dialects, Urdu and Sanskrit”. Thus, this was the prime reason that led her to choose Hindi as her language of expression during the time when people were allured by the language of West.
Critiqued in her day for being “obscene” and “masculine”, her writings created an uproar in the Hindi literary canon. She even fought a 26-year long copyright case filed by Amrita Pritam, a case that saw poet Ashok Vajpeyi and author Khushwant Singh appearing in court to elaborate upon the word zindaginama which ultimately tilted in Pritam’s favour. However, she was highly esteemed for her contributions later. Askok Vajpeyi while praising her said that “Nobody has written so endearingly of writers”.The use of the pseudonym “Hashmat” also played in her favour and this has been elaborated by Sukrita Paul Kumar, who said that it enabled Sobti to write without inhibition about her peers.[9]
At an age when people usually hang their boots, Sobti (92) continues to channelize her creative energies to fulfil her writerly commitments. Her autobiographical novel, Gujarat Pakistan se Gujarat Hindustan, was released recently. While “settling her pending duties”, she has passed on her manuscripts to archives of a university in order to keep the flow of creativity moving. A master poet and one of the finest novelist of Hindi literary canon, Krishna Sobti is and will remain a prolific contributor to literature for ages to come.
Author: Madhav
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With thanks! Valuable information!
With thanks! Valuable information!
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