"Attitude of not promoting our literature
is backward"

WORDS simply surge on ahead as he sits talking in his inimitable, self-absorbed manner. Occasionally, a sudden, child-like laughter breaks forth unexpectedly, creating a wave of ripples in the ceaseless flow. His geniality is truly infectious; a warm glow enveloping as it slowly spreads. The conversation meanders, making one aware of his soft and gentle ways; a mild-mannered, reassuring presence.

One doesn’t take long to discover that Mohan Bhandari’s talent as an engaging conversationalist is in no way different from his mastery over the art of story-telling. As he picks his way through the maze of myriad experiences it’s the power and the punch of his narration that both excites and enthralls. He speaks just the way he writes; in clipped, pared-down sentences, weaving rich, evocative images in a manicured language. Once his charm begins to work, the only choice one has is to sit back and listen, without a murmur or protest.

Such has been the elan of his story-telling and such, its compelling force. His five collections of short stories spread over four decades of writing career are its living testimony. His very first collection Til Chauli (1965) won him Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi Award. Though the second volume Manukh Di Per came soon in 1967, the third one Kaath Di Lat had to wait until about eight years and Pacchan, the fourth one, another 12.

Born in Banbhaura, a small village of Sangrur, in 1937, Mohan Bhandari grew up in a non-literary ambience. Wandering through the long, narrow streets of his village, he imbibed whatever he could from the landscape or the folk-literature. Memories of his rural past often mingle with the crackling sounds of city life, forming the rich texture of his stories.

That his contribution to the cause of Punjabi letters is, indeed, profound is something his critics and readers have recognised for a long time now. It’s another matter that national recognition by way of Sahitya Akademi Award has come only recently. Mohan Bhandari spoke to Rana Nayar about his long journey through life as well as literature. Here are the excerpts:

What were the influences that helped you become a writer?

(Reflects awhile) In a way, my life is a story by itself. Full of incidents, believable or otherwise. Childhood influences are, of course, there. Partition into two nations (two halves) was one such incident which didn’t just affect me deeply but, I think, every sensitive soul. It was an unprecedented situation, especially for Punjab. So many murders in the name of religion! It sounds unbelievable today.

The second was the death of my father. I was very young then. Everyone in the village used to say, "What’ll be the fate of these orphans now?" That’s when my mother did something that virtually transformed our lives. She has a very special place in my life. She would make little things like candy floss or dahi-bhalla which then we would sell in the village, vending them around. As a young boy, I was particularly interested in reading or listening to quissas. Our own folk tales of Punjab also left a deep impact on me. By the time I was in class X, I had read all the major writers of Punjabi, including Hindi and Urdu writers such as Rajinder Singh Bedi, Sadat Hasan Manto or Prem Chand. Later, I read the works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Camus as well. Even the American writers. It’s my conviction that a writer should read ten times as much as he writes.

Of all the writers you have mentioned just now, who all have made a difference to your creativity? Would you like to name a few?

You know, it’s rather difficult. Because, I feel, it’s continuous process. At one time, I really used to like Nanak Singh a great deal. So impressed was I with him that once I stole one of his novels. He was a strong influence, then. A stage came when I started rethinking that he definitely has a place in history but his sensibility is not sufficiently modern. Once he was left behind, Kulwant S. Virk came to the forefront. Then there are individual stories such as Dudeh by Gurcharan Singh, Ras Lila by Sujan Singh, Fashionable Kurri by K.S. Duggal and Khubbal by Kulwant Singh Virk which will always stay with me. Such stories have strengthened the very foundations of our tradition of story-telling.

It’s often said about me that I’m somewhat partial to Manto and Bedi. Let me confess that I’m. It’s because of the special tang, even solidity of their language. I remember my Marxist friends had advised me against reading Dostoevsky saying ‘he is a an evil genius.’ They said, ‘You read Gorky.’ But I read both with profit. In a way, both influenced me as well. When we talk of Sartre and Camus, totally different dimensions open up.

One finds a good deal of similarity between your work and that of Chekhov, especially in terms of psychological realism. Your comments, please?

For over 25 years now, I’ve literally been chanting Chekhov like a mantra.He is, indeed, incomparable. He was perhaps the greatest humanist the world has known. (After a brief pause) I think, I’m also a humanist. He says somewhere that vulgarity doesn’t lie in your guest spilling a drop of curry but the real vulgarity is the host watching him do that. I can never forget stories like Ward Number Six or The Bride all my life. I don’t think his influence on me ever wane or decline. People often taunt me, saying, ‘No point in talking to this man. He doesn’t talk of anyone less than Chekhov.’ I regard him as the father of modern short story.

You have talked of modern short story just now. What, according to you, are the special attributes of this form in Punjabi?

Let me share a small, personal anecdote with you. I remember when I first read out my story Paarh, Dr Attar Singh asked me, "Why is it that such a long short story couldn’t be written by any of your predecessors?" I responded in as artless a manner, "Simply because they hadn’t lived through the circumstances and the situations I have had to." Put simply, the challenges a writer has to face today are materially different from the ones his counterpart had to cope with yesterday. Technology has influenced us a great deal. The media, too, is extremely powerful. All this has become an integral part of modern writing. Modernity doesn’t lie in any single factor. It’s a combination of all these.

I’d like to insist that there are certain basic values, intrinsic to man which remain unchanged. Something that Chekhov hadstarted is not over as yet. And that is the perennial interest in the human feelings, his heart and mind. It’s the centrality of human being as the subject of literature that hasn’t changed, nor is it likely to. But the prescriptions that a story should have a beginning, middle or an end are no longer valid. Modernity lies in facing the challenges that the new forms of life or newer practices are constantly throwing up.

Are you implying that modernity is a matter of content alone, not of the form at all? How do you perceive the relationship between the two?

I don’t reject the form out of hand. It has an important role to play. But let’s face it, it’s the content that dictates the form. Form by itself has no existence, no meaning. It’s an integtral part of content. Of course the writer must know how he is going to present things. But in the first place, one should have something to say, at least. One must find a thousand and one ways of expressing oneself. That’s what creativity is all about. Ultimately, there is no escape from the clutches of experience.

Some people are of the view that Punjab crisis is too recent and too close a tragedy to be written about. How do you react?

There’s no doubt that a good deal of trash has been written on this subject. It’s too melodramatic, no more than a public act of breastbeating. Besides, the literature of a movement loses its significance once that movement has lived itself through. But if one has ingested whatever one is writing, literature ceases to be topical and becomes a work of art frozen in time. Manto, Bedi and Virk were all part of one movement or the other. Manto didn’t wait long enough to write on Partition.

In my latest collection Moon Di Akh, all the seven stories are about the crisis of the 1980s. And it’s this book that has fetched me the award as well. Rather than get into the debate why not find out what life is all about? To put it another way, mohabbat wo nagma hai, jo har saaz pe gaaya nahi jata.

You have always stressed the relationship between life and literature. Don’t you think consumerism has affected this relationship adversely?

Consumerism is a big challenge for everyone, most of all a writer. Let me say, literature can never become a disposable commodity. It can never be bought, sold, used or discarded. But it certainly poses a threat to the regional literatures. That is because English Press doesn’t believe in promoting the cause of Indian writings or writers. When this award was announced, the names of Telugu or Tamil writers were published in Punjabi Press but the English Press took no note of who the awardee in Punjabi was. I’m not complaining, but our media is blatantly partisan. A good number of people are writing nothing but trash. But they are being promoted by the market forces. They do grading as well in terms of how many lakh copies sold. Should a writer be judged on the basis of the total copies sold? What kind of criterion is that? This attitude of not promoting our own literatures is a backward one. This must go. There should be a more energetic dialogue across the languages.

If Punjabi literature has failed to develop a wider reach or audience, who do you blame?

First, let me say a few things about the critics and criticism. By and large, our Punjabi criticism is really the pits. There are good critics, too. But only a few. A good critic can sometimes help a writer discover those layers of his own psyche which he may not have known himself. A critic’s job is not to tell the writer what to write or how to. Of course there hasn’t been much of comparative criticism in Punjabi. There is a virtual ignorance about what is being written in Hindi or Urdu. That’s not very healthy. Translations will help provided these don’t overwrite the original language. We have to overcome prejudices and then communicate.

How is a story born, ordinarily?

(A long pause) I sometimes take up to three months to shape a story. The actual act of writing does not take long. But all the knotty questions such as what to keep and what to leave or how to proceed do take rather long. Sometimes, a story just comes as a flash. I sit down and write it out in the first sitting itself without changing a syllable or a comma. And people think it’s a brilliant story. I remember once I worked very hard on a story. It underwent several revisions. Yet it failed to strike a chord among the readers.

You really can’t say anything about the process. (Laughs heartily) You can’t really make a plan and write literature. It doesn’t mean one shouldn’t work hard. That’s inescapable. But what one really waits for is a flash, a sudden revelation, a moment of epiphany. While writing, I have always had this at the back of my mind that I should somehow tear my heart off and offer it to my readers.

Is there any particular experience of yours that you would like to share with your readers?

I’ll share a childhood experience with you. A narrow canal runs close to our village. The ambience is really beautiful. As children we often used to splash around in the water. We had learnt to swim rather early. I remember when I first jumped into the canal to swim across, I was mid-stream when I felt I wouldn’t be able to swim across. As I turned back I saw an elderly man standing upon the bank. He shouted across to me, "Don’t turn back. You’ll drown, " Lo and behold! within minutes, I had reached the other bank. This is what happens in literature, too.One has to walk through dark, narrow lanes. But one mustn’t turn back ever.

In which direction do you find Punjabi short fiction moving right now?

At one stage, we felt that the young writers lacked depth. Sometime back, I had to do a column. That’s when I read quite a few authors. I realised how wrong we were. It was really an eye-opener for me. The new crop is startlingly better than the old one. I’m quite optimistic about its future now.

Just a few words for the young and upcoming writers. Any message?

All I’d say is, "Haath soch ke gandal noo paain kehri eh toon saag tordi." Write if you must but remember all the stages from sowing the seed to plucking off the saag. Write only if you’re prepared to face it all. Otherwise, well, ... (breaks off).