Tag: Punjabi

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Stories

The Bus Conductor by Dalip Kaur Tiwana

Short story by Dr. Dalip Kaur Tiwana, translated from the original Punjabi by C. Christine Fair

Dr Dalip Kaur Tiwana. Courtesy: Creative Commons

Dr. Dalip Kaur Tiwana (4 May 1935 – 31 January 2020) is recognised as one of the most consequential Punjabi authors who substantially contributed to the development of modern Punjabi literature. Prior to her death, she published twenty-seven novels, seven collections of short stories as well as a literary biography. Tiwana was also a distinguished academic. She was the first woman in the region to obtain a Ph.D. from Punjab University in 1963.  She joined the Punjabi University at Patiala from which she retired as a Dean as well as a Professor of Punjabi. Dr. Tiwana garnered innumerable regional as well as national awards within India, including the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Shri, India’s fourth largest civilian honor. She surrendered her Padma Shri in 2015 expressing “Solidarity with other writers who are protesting against the increasing cultural intolerance in our society and politics and the threat to free speech and creative freedom.”

The Bus Conductor

Art by C Christine Fair

The lady doctor, Polly, had been transferred from Nabhe to Patiala. Her family members were trying to get the transfer rescinded. That is why, instead of taking a house and living in Patiala, she got permission from the senior doctor to come from Nabhe every morning by bus and return in the evening.

She felt ill at ease because of the shivering sound of the idling buses, the heat, the sweat, the crowds, the ludicrous indolence of the conductors, and the rude banter. Thinking to herself, “But this is just a matter of days,” she suffered it all. On the days when Jit was on duty for that bus, she would feel a bit comfortable because that conductor seemed to be good natured.

One day, a man asked Jit, “Where does that girl with the bag work?”

Jit said discretely as he was handing over the ticket, “Aho[1] sir!  She is a lady doctor. A very senior lady doctor. People say that her salary is a full three hundred rupees.”

“Sir, these days women are earning more than men. That’s why men are no longer the boss,” said the man as he sat down on a seat nearby.

“Sir, no matter what they earn, girls of a good household still must lower their eyes when they speak…and this lady doctor, I go to Patiala all the time and by god, she doesn’t even speak…,” said the Sardar who was sitting behind while gazing towards Polly.

“By god! I also….” He stopped mid-sentence when Jit, while handing the ticket to this dandy in a pink shirt, glowered at him and said, “So, brother. Do you want to go? Or should I toss you off the bus now?”

“Conductor Sir.  I didn’t anything. Why are you getting angry like this?”

While Jit was handing the ticket over to Polly, she began to give him the ten she took out.

“I don’t have any change. Forget about it and pay in full tomorrow.” Having said this, Jit moved on.

Ahead, there was elderly woman who also took out a ten. “Ma’am, I don’t have change. The entire fare is 10.5 annas[2] and you take out such a large note and hand it to me? Fine. Go and get change and then come back,” Jit said in a rather stern voice.

“Young man! In that time, the bus will have left and it’s urgent that I go.  You can return the rest of the money to me in Patiala,” the elderly woman begged of him.

“Fine, ma’am. Sit down,” he said as he began to cut her a ticket.

Polly was thinking about the hospital, all of the patients, the medicines, the nurses, and the various duties as the bus left behind Rakhra, then Kalyan and then Rony and neared the Chungu toll booth.

Jit told the driver, “Yaar[3]!  Today drive towards this blue building right here.”

The passengers who were travelling to the gurdwara grumbled a bit, but by now the bus had turned and was once more on the direct route. Near the Flower Cinema the conductor rang the bell to stop the bus, opened the door, and began to tell Polly, “You get down here, the hospital will be nearby.”

Polly got down quickly. She even forgot to say thank you. She thought to herself, “That poor fellow is such a nice conductor.”

By the time she reached the bus station that evening to begin her journey home, the bus was already full. With great difficulty she waited 45 minutes for another bus. A bus conductor, with his shirt unbuttoned, passed her three times while mumbling the song from the film Awaara[4]. He gave an anna to a female beggar to get rid of her for some time. She didn’t know why, but people were staring at her wide-eyed.

The next day, it happened by chance, that when she reached the Nabha bus station, the buses were already full, and Jit was turning away additional passengers without a ticket. Jit approached her and said, “You can pick up the bag on the front seat and sit down. I saved a seat for you.”

Polly passed by several gawking passengers and sat down. Jit immediately rang the bell for the bus to move forward.

“This conductor is so good-natured,” Polly thought to herself.

As the delays in getting her posting to Nabha stretched over time, she became depressed. The sound of the idling buses and fears of the bus leaving were constantly on her mind. Whenever she was forced to sit next to a fat passenger, her nice clothes would get wrinkled, and the stench of sweat would make her dizzy.

Then one day when she was about to give money for her ticket, Jit said, “No madam, forget about it,” and moved ahead.

“No sir, please take the money,” Polly emphatically requested.

“What difference will it make whether I take your money or not?” he asked. He walked further ahead and began to give a ticket to someone.

Polly, feeling self-conscious from the argument, sat down quietly but throughout the journey she was wondering why the conductor didn’t take money from her. She did not like it at all. For someone earning Rs. 300 what is the value 10.5 annas?

The next day she intentionally left five minutes late, thinking, “Today I won’t go on the Pipal Bus. Instead, I’ll take the Pepsu Roadways Bus.  What nonsense is this that he won’t take the money!”

She was stupefied to see that the driver had started the bus and was standing yelling at the conductor.

“Oye! I am just coming. Why are you yelling? Why do want to leave so early? Is it about to rain?” Jit said, while walking very, very slowly.

“Are we going to the next station or not? You’re taking your sweet time getting here,” the driver said.

“Get over here, Madam and take the front seat, and open the window,” Jit said to Polly.

“How can the bus leave without Madam?” mumbled a clerk in the back who took the bus from Nabhe to Patiala every day.

Jit glared at him. Everyone fell silent. The bus left. Polly took out the money but despite her repeated attempts, Jit refused to take it. Polly became very angry. “Jit is making me a part of this scam…But why is he neither charging me nor giving me a ticket?… Still, this is defrauding the company…” She was thinking this just as the bus stopped and a ticket-checker boarded. When he was checking the tickets of the other passengers, Polly broke out in a nervous sweat.

“How humiliating it is that I don’t have a ticket…. I will tell him that the conductor didn’t give me a ticket even though I asked for one,” she thought. “But what will the poor man say? No. I will tell him that I forgot. But no. How can I lie,” she debated with herself.

Then the checker approached her.

As soon as he said, “Madam…ticket,” Jit, taking a ticket out of his pocket, called out, “She…. she…This woman is my sister. I have her ticket.”

Seeing the ticket, the checker glanced at the conductor whose pants were threadbare at the knees and whose khaki uniform was worn at the elbows. Then, he looked over the woman in the expensive sari.  He smiled with his eyes.

Jit became flustered. The checker quickly got down from the bus.

Polly, surprised and worried, was thinking that perhaps this man, who earns a paltry Rs. 60 per month, didn’t eat during the day so that he could pay for my entire fare.

In the hospital, she kept thinking about this. She felt so uneasy about it.

In the evening when she reached the station, Jit was sad as he slowly made his way towards her.

“My older sister also studied medicine in Lahore…and she died there during the riots of partition. The rest of my family perished too. I somehow managed to make it here alive. How could I even think about studying when I could barely feed myself?  Then I became a conductor. When I saw your bag and stethoscope, I remembered Amarjit…and…and….” Then he choked up.

Polly was very distraught. She didn’t know how to respond.

Meanwhile, the bus came.  He quickly walked towards it and Polly kept on watching him walk away with affection in her moist eyes.

(Translated and published with permission from the Punjabi publisher at https://punjabistories.com. Link to the Punjabi story: https://punjabistories.com/tag/bus-conductor-by-dalip-kaur-tiwana/)

[1] A Punjabi expletive like Oh!

[2] Equal to 1/16 of a rupee

[3] Friend

[4] A 1951 movie – Awaara means vagabond

C. Christine Fair is a professor in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program.  She studies political and military events of South Asia and travels extensively throughout Asia and the Middle East. Her books include In Their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (OUP 2019); Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War (OUP, 2014); and Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (Globe Pequot, 2008). She has published creative pieces in The Bark, The Dime Show Review, Furious Gazelle, Hypertext, Lunch Ticket, Clementine Unbound, Fifty Word Stories, The Drabble, Sandy River Review, Barzakh Magazine, Bluntly Magazine, Badlands Literary Journal, among others. Her visual work has appeared in Vox Populi, pulpMAG, The Indianapolis Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, The New Southern Fugitives, Glassworks and Existere Journal of Arts. Her translations have appeared in the Bombay Literary Magazine, Bombay Review, Muse India and The Punch Magazine. She reads, writes and speaks Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu.

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Categories
Tribute

In Memory of Peace

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori*.
-- Dulce et Decorum Est, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

*Translated: "It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland."

  • South Africa
  • India
  • Singapore
World War 1 memorials stretched across countries: Courtesy: Creative Commons

On 11th November, we remember the men who gave up their lives to win wars for those in power. Remembrance Day started as an annual event after the First World War (28th July, 1914- 11the November, 1918) more than a hundred years ago, in memory of soldiers — some of who were lost in the battle grounds, whose remains never got back to their families. Some of these men who fought were from countries that were subservient to colonial powers who started the war and some, like the soldier-poet, Wilfred Owen, were from conquering nations.

This was much before atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Eventually, a nuclear armistice was declared. Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), an internationally acknowledged apostle of peace, had an opinion on this: “‘The very frightfulness of the atom bomb will not force non-violence on the world? If all nations are armed with the atom bomb, they will refrain from using it as it will mean absolute destruction for all concerned?’ I am of the opinion that it will not.” Has this nuclear armistice made the world more peaceful? And if so, what is the quality of peace that has been wrought by drumming fears of annihilation in human hearts? Could the ‘fakir…striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace’ be right after all?

Here we have collected a few stories and poems around ongoing conflicts and wars which stretch to the present day, some old and some new… some even written by men who faced battle…

Poetry

A poem and art by Sybil Pretious in memory of soldiers who died in the World War I.

Soldiers & Missives by Prithvijeet Sinha … Click here to read.

Our Children by Bijan Najdi, translated from Persian by Davood Jalili. Click here to read.

Prose

Line of Control by Paresh Tiwari, a story about the life of soldiers set in the Indo-Pak border… Click here to read.

I am a Coward with Priorities by Tejaswinee Roychowdhury, a story from a soldier’s perspective. Click here to read.

From the Pages of a Soldier’s Diary… by Mike Smith takes you on a journey through the pages of a colonial diary and muses on choices he has made. Click here to read.

Bundu, Consoler of the Rich is a story based on memories of the Partition by Nadir Ali, translated from Punjabi by Amna Ali. Click here to read.

In a Land Far From Home: A Bengali in Afghanistan, an excerpt from an account by Syed Mujataba Ali, translated from Bengali by Nazes Afroz. Click here to read.

  • America
  • Portugal
  • Russia
World War 1 memorials stretched across countries: Courtesy: Creative Commons
Categories
Bhaskar's Corner

Amrita Sher-Gil: An Avant-Garde Blender of the East & West

Bhaskar Parichha explores how the life and art of Amrita Sher-Gil was an amalgam of the best of India and the West

  • Self Portrait by Amrita Sher-Gil
  • Three Women by Amrita Sher-Gil
Courtesy: Wiki

Much before the Punjabi diaspora spread its wings across continents, there was one woman who not only became a venerated name in the field of art but also gave art an altogether new identity in India. She was Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941). Born to Umrao Singh Sher-Gil Majithia, a Sikh aristocrat and a great scholar of Sanskrit and Persian, and Marie Antoinette Gottesmann, a Jewish opera singer from Hungary, Amrita inherited a legacy that was consummate and effervescent. 

Amrita was the eldest of the two daughters. Her younger sister was Indira Sundaram, mother of   painter Vivan Sundaram. Amrita spent her early childhood in Dunaharaszti, Hungary. She was also the niece of the Indologist Ervin Baktay. It was Baktay who guided her — by being a critique of her works — and gave her the academic underpinning that helped Amrita flourish. Ervin also taught her to use domestic helpers as models; and the reminiscence of these models eventually motivated her to return to India. 

Sher-Gil’s quest for the fine art led her to Paris, with her mother, when she was barely sixteen. She studied first at the Grande Chaumiere under Pierre Vaillant and subsequently at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where she was taught by Lucien Simon.

In her early twenties, Sher-Gil returned to India in 1921. The family began living in Shimla. She was by now an accomplished painter, equipped with some of the most essential modules that make one a great artist. She had an unquenchable thirst to be on familiar terms with the grammar and the language of painting, a virile tenacity of purpose and the single-mindedness about her role in life. 

 In 1924, she went to Italy and joined Santa Annunciata, a Roman Catholic institution. In Santa, Amrita Sher-Gil got an exposure to the works of Italian artists. While studying in Paris, she had already been influenced by the works of European greats like Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. Her later paintings would echo a strong influence of the Western artists, chiefly from the Bohemian circles of Paris of the early 1930s.

 In 1932, she displayed her first important work, Young Girls, which led to her appointment as an Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris in 1933, making her the youngest ever and the only Asian to have received such recognition. In 1934, while in Europe, she was haunted by what is known through her letters ‘an intense longing to return to India’ and ‘feeling in some strange way that there lay my destiny as a painter’. 

After her return, she began a rediscovery of the traditions of Indian art which would continue till her death. It was also during this period that she pursued an affair with Malcolm Muggeridge. In the mid-thirties, Amrita Sher-Gil’s mission for exploring further into Indian art began. It was a never-ending journey and her contributions to art was a breakthrough and uniquely superb. From Mughal miniatures to the Ajanta paintings and Southern styles, the Indian influence on her work was complete and irreversible. 

 In 1936, at the behest of Karl Khandalavala, art collector and critic, Amrita pursued her lifelong passion for realizing her Indian roots. She found inspiration in the Pahari School of painting. Later, in 1937, she toured South India and produced the famous South Indian trilogy paintings- ‘Bride’s Toilet’, ‘Brahmachari’ and ‘The South Indian Villagers’. These paintings mirror   her passionate sense of colour and an equally passionate empathy for Indian subjects. Poverty and despair constitute a major theme in Amrita Sher-Gil’s works and they find plentiful representation on her canvas. Her works also showed an engagement with the works of Hungarian painters, especially the Nagybanya School of painting in the interwar years.

In 1938, Amrita married her Hungarian first cousin, Dr. Victor Egan. After this marriage, they moved to Gorakhpur (UP) and, still later, the couple shifted to Lahore where she lived till her death in 1941.

Amrita Sher-Gil was one of the most gifted Indian artists belonging to the pre-colonial era. Her works reflect her deep ardour and perception for colours. Her profound understanding of the Indian subjects comes so vividly in her works that it is difficult to find parallels elsewhere. The works of Amrita Sher-Gil have been declared national art treasures by the Government and most of her paintings adorn the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. There is also a Delhi road named after the painter — Amrita Sher-Gil Marg. 

Amrita Sher-Gil’s legacy stands at par with those of the masters of the Bengal renaissance. She is said to be the ‘most expensive’ woman painter in India. Besides remaining an inspiration to many contemporary Indian artists, she was the muse for one of the longest running Urdu plays, Tumhari Amrita (1992), directed by Javed Siddiqi, with Shabana Azmi and Farooq Sheikh playing the lead roles. Her works are also a central force in the novel, Faking It, authored by Amrita V Chowdhury. The beauty and depth of Amrita Sher-Gil’s paintings has earned her inordinate admiration and recognition beyond her days.

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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.

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Categories
Essay

Remembering Shiv Kumar Batalvi

By Amrita Sharma

Shiv Kumar Batalvi: Sourced by Amrita Sharma

A shayar (poet) who received exceptional fame, a poet who became the youngest recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award and a star who left too early at a young age of 36, Shiv Kumar Batalvi remains one of those few poets who lived and died within the embrace of poetic charm. Being an immensely popular poet during his lifetime who wrote in one of the Indian regional languages, Punjabi, he received international acclaim within a very brief span of time.

With around eight collections of poems to his credit and as a performer who read and sang his verses across innumerable public gatherings, Shiv Kumar Batalvi (1936-1973) remains a popular subject for critical writings ranging from doctoral thesis to popular magazines. Born on July 23, 1936, in a village, named Bara Pind Lohtian, situated in the northern part of pre-partition Punjab, Batalvi spent a peaceful childhood until his family migrated to India after Partition. As a young man in his twenties, writing in the 1960s, a period marked by a new force of modernity across the world, Batalvi’s verses ranged over a vast canvas of themes and wanderings. Though largely remembered as a love poet who was fascinated with death and grief, he wrote prolifically on subjects that even remained unconventional and anti-stereotypical for his time.

As the month of May marked the time of the year when Batalvi breathed his last, this article is a revisit to his poetic style that commemorates and celebrate his poetic vibrancy. Perhaps one of his most popular compositions remains his song titled “Ki PuCHde Ho Haal FakeeraaN Da” (The Condition Of Fakirs) that opens with the following lines that grew immensely popular with his performances:

Ki puCHdiyo ho haal fakeeraaN da
SaaDa nadiyoN viCHRe neeraaN da.
SaaDa haNjh di joone aaiyaaN da
SaaDa dil jaleyaaN dilgeeraaN da!

Why ask about the condition of fakirs like us?
We are water, separated from its river,
Emerged from a tear,
Melancholy, distressed!

With a poetic sensibility that remained enchanting with its rhythmic flow and vigour, Batalvi may be credited with enriching his first language with poetic compositions that captured its cultural essence. While not losing out on the classical Punjabi style, he wrote songs that were cast in a traditional tone and yet remained a part of the emerging modern verse. For instance, the following lines from his poem “Vidhva Ruht” (“Widowed Season”) read as follows:

Is ruhte sab rukh nipatare
Mahik-vihoone
Is ruhte saaDe sukh de sooraj
SekoN oone.
Maae ni par vidhva joban
Hor vi loone.
Haae ni
E loona joban ki kareeya?
Maae ni is vidhva rut da ki kareeye?

In this season the trees are leafless,
Without fragrance.
In this season, the sun of my happiness
Has no warmth.
But even more bitter
Is my widowed youth.
Tell me,
What should I do
With this bitter youth.

With suffering and its accompanying emotions remaining closest to Batalvi’s poetic outlook, he carved verses that spoke to his readers and listeners, thus, revisiting an oral tradition. Recreating and enticing the concept of sorrow with his love for the natural, Batalvi wrote of an optimistic vision to it in a manner of a folk song, as in his verse titled “JiNdu De BaageeN” (The Garden Of Life) where he writes:

k taaN taeNDaRe
Kol kathoori,
Dooje taaN dard baRe,
Teeja te taeNDRa
Roop suhaNdaRa
GalaaN taaN milakh kare!

Remember that you have
The sac of musk,
You also have great sorrow.
Thirdly you are
Beautiful,
And your words are precious

Batalvi’s verses thus particularly remain memorable for his fascination with grief, pathos and pain.

Though having suffered severe critical dismissals, Batalvi nevertheless remained extremely popular with the masses. Majority of his compositions have been now cast into songs by numerous popular singers on both sides of the border within the Indian subcontinent. Having lived a life that often became a subject of social critique and having died at a very young age due to failing health, Batalvi perhaps remains a singularly unique poet who lived and died with  the unconventionality of his poetic romance.

While India faces a surge in the outbreak of the Covid 19 virus, we continue to alternate between emotions of anxiety and grief. Poetry by Batalvi encapsulates within itself a range of emotions that contain the charm of enticing an entire tradition of such alternating emotions, it remains endearing to remember such poets today. Difficult times as those we face today may serve to strengthen our faith in the capacity of literature that helps us look beyond our immediate surroundings. Recalling Batalvi’s poetry, I would like to end by leaving you with the following lines by him:


Ih mera geet dharat toN maela
Sooraj jeD puraana.
KoT janam toN piya asaanu
Is da bol haNDHaana.
Hor kise di jaah na koi
Is nu hoNTHeeN laana,
Ih taaN mere naal janmeya
Naal bahishteeN jaana

This song more soiled than the earth,
As old as the sun,
For many births I have had to live
The weight of its words.
No one else is able
To bring voice to it.
This song was born with me,
And will die with me.

(The texts for the poems  and their translations were taken from http://apnaorg.com/poetry/suman/index.html)

Amrita Sharma is a Lucknow based writer currently pursuing her Ph.D. in English from the University of Lucknow. Her works have previously been published in various online forums.Her area of research includes avant-garde poetics and innovative writings in the cyberspace.

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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL