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Saturday,
April 26, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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What about Dabwali? Hurriyat
isn't willing |
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Repulsive
trade THE report of women from West Bengal and Bangladesh being sold to local persons in Mansa district in Punjab is indeed shocking. What is even more outrageous is that this is a common practice, which occurs every now and then. In the latest case, it seems a mandi was organised in a village some time ago. There girls were ‘sold off’ to some local landlords and other middle-aged men.
Resolution of SYL
dispute
Paths that cross
A saga of fragile,
shifting relationships
Playing for keeps
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What about Dabwali? THE Delhi High Court has set a stiff benchmark for settling civil disputes caused by criminal neglect. Six years ago, 59 persons were killed in a fire in Uphaar cinema in Delhi. The owners were accused of violating most of the safety rules. To ensure that the powerful owners, the Ansals, were brought to justice, the families of the victims formed the Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy. The coming together of the families was the key to the successful handling of the suit for civil damages. The nearly Rs 21 crore compensation package reflects efficiency of the association's lawyers and the sensitivity of the judiciary in deciding the quantum of compensation for the families of the victims. The message for victims of similar tragedies is very clear. Collective and sustained legal pressure plus the ability to tap sources in the media played crucial roles in helping the Delhi High Court deliver the landmark judgement. The court while holding the Uphaar owners primarily responsible for the ghastly accident expressed its displeasure over the indifference of the Delhi Vidyut Board, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Delhi Police in managing the crisis. That is why the Ansals have been directed to pay 55 per cent of the amount as compensation and the three wings of Delhi's local administration 15 per cent each as their share of the liability. The Uphaar civil suit is nowhere near the Bhopal gas case in which damages running into $47 million were awarded to the victims of the world's worst industrial disaster. But there is a difference between the two cases. In the Uphaar case the families of the victims will sustain the legal pressure in the event of the Ansals going in appeal against the verdict to the apex court. Most of the Uphaar victims came from educated middle class families. Their relatives had little problem in organising a collective movement for justice. But the same is not true of the victims of the continuing tragedy in Bhopal. They have neither received adequate medical aid nor money in spite of the hefty size of the compensation package. In Haryana, the plight of the victims of the Dabwali fire is even worse. On December 23, 1995, 442 persons, mostly school students, their teachers and parents perished in a devastating fire during the annual day function of the local DAV School. The pandal, made of synthetic material that fed the fire, turned into a blazing inferno within seconds. The entire congregation was literally roasted alive. Those who survived wish they too had perished in the fire. Why? Because of the criminal indifference of the school authorities, the district administration and the pandal owner in arranging the best possible medical care for them. The survivors have become social outcaste because of the physical deformities caused by the fire. Dabwali is a small town and most of the residents do not have the means to hire the services of top lawyers, as the Uphaar victims' families had done, for bringing the guilty to justice. Are they having to pay the price for being at the lower end of the social and economic ladder?
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Hurriyat isn't willing THE decision of the All-Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC) not to hold talks with the Centre's chief negotiator, Mr N. N. Vohra, is true to form. The APHC leaders had boycotted Mr
K.C. Pant also, although they did hold a few sessions with the Kashmir Committee members in Srinagar and Delhi. Foreign diplomats had reportedly put considerable pressure on them to hold talks with Mr Vohra and at one stage it had appeared that they had shed their rigid stand. However, the APHC finally developed cold feet, apparently on the basis of instructions received from agencies across the border. The aim of naysayers is to ensure that no peaceful settlement can come about. In any case, even if it had agreed to hold talks, any positive outcome was unlikely because the 23-party conglomerate questions the very accession of the state to India and wants discussion on the future of Kashmir with the country. The self-styled keeper of the Kashmiri aspirations is bent upon putting roadblocks on the way to any meaningful dialogue. But by remaining tied to the apronstrings of Pakistan it has reduced its own importance to a great extent. It is true that for any discussion to be fruitful, it needs to be fairly wide-ranging, but the whole process cannot be allowed to be circumvented by a group of people bent upon promoting the interests not of Kashmiris but of Pakistan. The APHC wants a dialogue without any preconditions, but has put conditions of its own, which it calls "fundamental" — dialogue without preconditions, dialogue at the highest level (meaning the Prime Minister himself) and "only with those representing the disputed nature of the problem". The last rider means that the Centre should talk to the Hurriyat and the Hurriyat alone. The APHC has also tried to further muddy the water by arguing that the Central government should use the same yardstick with the Kashmiri leadership which it used with the Naga leaders. Its leaders admit that there is no similarity between Nagaland and Kashmir as far as political dispute is concerned. And yet, they want similar modalities to be adopted. While it is desirable that Mr Vohra talks to all sections of society, the process cannot be held up by any one section, especially the one whose locus standi itself is doubtful. While the Hurriyat remains cocooned in a tower of its own making which is not even made up of ivory, there is need for having wide-spectrum discussions with all others who are amenable to reason and adopt a constructive approach. |
Repulsive trade THE report of women from West Bengal and Bangladesh being sold to local persons in Mansa district in Punjab is indeed shocking. What is even more outrageous is that this is a common practice, which occurs every now and then. In the latest case, it seems a mandi was organised in a village some time ago. There girls were ‘sold off’ to some local landlords and other middle-aged men. The selling of human beings of either gender immediately brings to mind images of slavery and bondage that one thought had been relegated to the dark pages of history books. It is, however, too contemporary for comfort. It was only earlier this month that a person was arrested under the Suppression of Immoral Traffic Act in Chandigarh. It turned out that the victim had been sold four times in less than a year! All too often, it is easy for society to turn a blind eye to such events and sweep them under the carpet. Only a few days ago, a debt-ridden farmer in Hari Singhpura village in Haryana sold off his young daughters, aged nine and six, to two men who agreed to write off his debt of Rs 50,000 in case he married his daughters to them. It was the assertive action of the classmates of the poor girls that prevented the marriage minutes before the ceremony was due to begin. In contrast, the villagers had taken no action against the unholy nuptials. It is indeed unfortunate that the kind of apathy that was considered typical of the towns is now spreading to the villages too. While it is difficult to have any sympathy for the perpetrators of such crimes, there is another side of the story. These are desperate acts induced by extreme poverty and the lack of hope. This is also an aspect that needs to be addressed, for which the state has to take special measures to ensure at least the basic needs of every citizen. This said, there is absolutely no excuse of any kind for anyone to sell another individual. How can a parent do this? How can elders allow youngsters to leave home without proper verification of the antecedents of those promising them jobs? How can human beings allow their basic bestiality to assert itself and still claim they live in civilised societies? These are questions that haunt us even as we look at the sale of women and minors. |
Resolution of SYL dispute THE SYL dispute between Punjab and Haryana has been hanging fire for over three decades. The problem of water sharing between the two states inevitably cropped up after the reorganisation of the erstwhile Punjab state in 1966 and creation of the new state of Haryana. The latest award on this contentious issue was the order of the Supreme Court last year directing the Punjab government to complete the canal within one year. This deadline has expired. Not a brick has been laid on this ill-fated project since the dark days of terrorism in Punjab, when the terrorists had gunned down SYL canal Chief Engineer Sekhri in Chandigarh, besides a Superintending Engineer and a few others who were working on the site. When the Supreme Court handed down its order last year on a petition moved by the Haryana government, the Akali government led by Mr Prakash Singh Badal was in office in Punjab. It moved a review petition, which was later dismissed by the court, clinching the issue. Elections were then due in Punjab, and Badal, seeing the writing on the wall, had perhaps surmised that he would not be Chief Minister next year. He, therefore, made loud protestations against the order, saying that Punjab would not allow a drop of water more to Haryana. The Congress government led by Capt Amarinder Singh, which assumed office after the elections, too showed little anxiety in the matter, and the project remained in limbo as before, notwithstanding the clear-cut direction of the apex court. The utter imperturbability of the Chief Minister was indeed remarkable. But he did mumble something about going to the Supreme Court again at the appropriate time. Just a day before the deadline the promised petition was moved, asking for de novo adjudication, putting the ball back in the Supreme Court’s court, as it were. The genesis of this inter-state dispute involving distribution of river waters can be traced back to the state’s reorganisation and coming into being of the new states of Punjab and Haryana on November 1, 1966. The demand for reorganisation had mainly been voiced by the Akalis. They were not happy with the multilingual Punjab that came to India’s share after Partition. They wanted to carve out a uni-lingual, Punjabi speaking state. In fact, there had been a prolonged agitation under Master Tara Singh and Sant Fateh Singh for achieving this objective. There was, therefore, jubilation and rejoicing when the new Punjabi-speaking Punjab was ultimately inaugurated in November, 1966. However, this division has been jinxed from the very beginning. There has been bickering and bad blood and worse between the two states, despite the fact that the task of determining the Punjabi-speaking areas was entrusted by the Government of India (GoI) to a judicial commission headed by a former Chief Justice of India, Justice Shah. There was a ruckus over the capital, Chandigarh, which Justice Shah had awarded to Haryana. The GoI decided to make it a Union Territory, as a temporary measure, housing the governments of both the states. Chandigarh issue too has defied a solution so far, just as the issue of the distribution of river waters. The Reorganisation Act provides for a mutually acceptable distribution of the rivers waters, failing which the GoI was empowered to arbitrate in the matter. After the two states failed to reach an agreement, the GoI gave its award. But it did not satisfy Punjab. After several twists and turns, the matter was entrusted to a judicial commission, popularly known as the Eradi Commission after its chairman, Justice Eradi, under the River Waters Disputes Act. The Commission, after hearing both the parties, had formulated its tentative award as far back as in 1987, enhancing the Punjab share by about .8 MAF from 4.22 determined by the GoI to 5 MAF and of Haryana by .3 MAF, proposing 3.83 MAF against 3.50 MAF awarded by the GoI. But Punjab was far from happy and has been sulking. It does not want the award to attain judicial finality. It has been harping on distribution according to the riparian principle, saying that Haryana is not entitled to any share in the Sutlej-Beas-Ravi basin. It conveniently forgets that Haryana too is a successor state of the post-partition Punjab, which had riparian rights in this basin. The riparian principle is in reality invoked by nation-states; it is irrelevant in a country, which is indeed thinking of linking its major rivers, so as to derive optimum advantage from this most precious resource of human development. Our democratic, socialistic polity is wedded to the policy of a balanced regional development. Any argument on behalf of a state that it has exclusive rights to the appropriation of river waters, as the rivers flow through its territories, is not likely to find support from the people, Parliament or the judiciary. In several of its policy documents, and many a legislation, the GoI’s basic stance, either overtly stated or clearly inferred, has been that the rivers are the country’s common capital. The Supreme Court in its turn gave a historical mandamus last year that the country’s rivers should be linked to form a national grid in a time-bound manner, reinforcing the same principle. Inter-state disputes, especially relating to the sharing of river waters do not remain within the confines of laws and logic, but take on emotive dimensions, and develop cross-currents of mass outbursts and even upheaval. In the resolution of the SYL issue, besides the Punjab government’s intransigence, the GoI’s dithering has further complicated the problem. The Eradi Commission has been allowed to remain moribund for a number of years by not filling the vacancy caused by a member-judge. The intervention of the Supreme Court was, therefore, needed to resolve the imbroglio. As the apex court had noted in its judgement, non-completion of the SYL, and stalling of the Eradi Commission award, have resulted in several hundred crores of rupees of the nation going down the drain every year. A huge army of officials engaged for construction of the SYL canal has been sitting idle, twiddling their thumbs and drawing their salary. The irrigation potential of eight lakh hectare arable land in Haryana lies unrealised; the state’s vast infrastructure of lift-irrigation system, probably the biggest in the world, lies largely unutilised. The apex court had rightly reprimanded the GoI for its lackadaisical attitude towards this matter of vital national importance, and had said that in case of the failure of the Punjab government to carry out the task in a year, the GoI should take steps to complete the canal by one of its agencies. It does not appear, however, that the Supreme Court order, or the expiry of the time limit, has made any noticeable impact either on the GoI or the Punjab government. The leadership in the two sister states refuses to show accommodation and goodwill. No one would grudge Punjab to fully secure its legal and constitutional rights, but as a state within the Union it has to learn to live in a spirit of give and take. An unambiguous direction now from the apex court to the GoI to complete the construction of the canal through one of its agencies like the BRO might help retrieve the hopeless situation. It is an open secret that the GoI has on many occasions in the past been on the point of taking a similar decision, but could not summon the necessary willpower. A fiat from the apex court may save it from the throes of decision-making. But apart from the incalculable national loss and developmental regression, the unfinished SYL symbolises the failure of our democratic governance. It makes pygmies of us all. In my view, apart from judicial support, a resolution of this dispute will require tact and perseverance, determination and will, at the highest level of political leadership at the Centre. It will require the skills of astute statesmanship. It is a historic challenge to the myth of resilience and strength of our polity. It will test the very mettle of our democracy. If this festering sore is healed, it will infuse vitality in our body
politic. The writer is a former Chief Secretary of Haryana |
Paths that cross TALL, bald-headed, slightly stooping, he looked very much like a pallbearer suffering from dyspepsia. The fellow I’m writing about had taken to walking on a narrow but shady path which, for several years I had regarded as being my exclusive preserve in the park where I take my evening constitutional. I did not mind casual intruders such as children with their mothers, dog-lovers with their pets or young couples strolling arm-in-arm. But a “regular” was a different proposition. Come to think of it, his daily appearance should not have irked me. He had as much right to walk where he chose as I had. All I wished was that he would do so at some different time so that I could feel that this particular path, lined with bougainvillaea bushes, was my very own. An unreasonable assumption, but there it was. Normally, I am a friendly sort of chap, ready to greet a stranger with a nod and a smile, but somehow I never felt inclined to flash my dentures at this fellow whom I looked upon as an
interloper. Nor did he seem to notice me as we passed each other every evening, one going south, the other north, or vice-versa. I often wondered, though, what he did for a living, or had done in his younger days. I judged him to be about the same age as I which meant that, like me, he was a retired person and had been for some time. A former government servant? teacher? banker? A disgruntled politician recharging his batteries? Then, one evening, he was not there, nor the next, and the next. Oddly, I began to miss him. I wondered if his dyspepsia had laid him low. But when a whole month went by without my seeing him, I felt certain that he was no longer alive. At my age — our age — it was a depressing thought. I began to lose my appetite. I visited my doctor and asked him to describe the symptoms of various diseases. I was relieved to learn that I had none of them. All the same, I gave up walking on my favourite path. A month or so later, I stopped going to that particular park. There is another one, not quite as pretty as my old one but within walking distance of my house. On my very first evening out, whom should I seek walking on the lawn but my dyspeptic pallbearer. Barely suppressing a shout of joy I caught up with him. Recognising me instantly he gave me a sickly smile. I asked him why he had given up walking in the other park. “One gets tired” he said, “of seeing the same faces every day.” I took the hint. So I am back on “my” path in “my” park. |
Playing for keeps MORE and more people are living alone. You might think there was safety — comfort, even — in such numbers but, thanks to the appeal of coupledom, so far, this does not seem to be the case. You might also think that, because there are so many other singletons out there, it would be perfectly easy for these lonely souls to inadvertently collide and — boom! — fall oh-so-happily in love. Wrong again. Thanks to the peculiarly isolating nature of modern life, finding a suitable partner is about as easy as negotiating Ikea on a Saturday morning. “Stop Getting Dumped!” is a slim manual, but every single one of its 113 pages is guaranteed to strike fear into your heart. The plan is to become a ‘dream girl’. Pedicured and manicured to within an inch of her life, a dream girl never asks a man for a date. She never gets the bill (and there was me, perfectly happy to go Dutch on a chicken korma). Once she has located a guy she fancies, she abstains from having sex with him. Should she feel herself about to succumb, she puts on her granny pants and avoids shaving her legs before she meets Mr Special for dinner. Thanks to speed dating [highly organised events at which you can meet up to 40 people in one night] and internet dating, the romance industry now has a lot in common with fast food. You choose from the menu, and then you eat — real quick. What doesn’t taste good goes straight in the bin. Dr Pam Spurr, author of The Dating Survival Guide (‘It’s a jungle out there!’), says Americans tend to date more than one person at a time. This does not mean they are sleeping with more than one person at a time, it’s a case of keeping their options open. They are perfectly honest about this. It’s not game-playing; it’s about keeping things interesting. Courtship rituals are still relatively old-fashioned over there, too. On the whole, the guy will pick you up and take you home afterwards. ‘You should treat a date like a job interview: look your best, get groomed. There may be potential in the man you are about to meet.’ She is against ‘leg-swinging’ and `nail-picking’ during a date, and she is for good posture, laughing at all his jokes and a soft ‘head-dip’ in the manner of Princess Diana. She suggests that people spend a few moments of every day leading up to a date visualising how successful it’s going to be. If you’re really nervous, write your three best attributes on a Post-it note and stick it on your bathroom cabinet. ‘In the American version of dating, a person is a commodity,’ she says. ‘You have this checklist: tick wealth, tick health and so on. The British go much more on gut reaction. There is still one thing that’s more difficult than meeting a member of the opposite sex... and that’s living with one.
The Guardian |
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A saga of fragile, shifting relationships Though Harjit made early forays into poetry, (his only collection being Sard Peran Di Udeek), short story remains his most favoured form of self-expression. With as many as five collections of stories to his credit, namely, Suka Patta Te Hawa (Dry Leaf and the Wind), Kala Lahoo (Black Blood), Sappan Da Ghar Bartania (Britain, the House of Serpents), Khoo Wala Ghar (The House With a Well) and Ik Sacch Mera Wi (I, too, Have a Claim to My Truth), Harjit Atwal could easily be counted among the major voices emanating from the Punjabi diaspora. Gifted with a highly individualistic and a forceful voice, Harjit Atwal has always sought to capture, in his stories, the shifting strands of man-woman relationships. Often, he explores the complexities and contradictions of this most basic form of human relatedness within the dual cultural framework. While some of his early stories carry the burden of nostalgia, an incessant longing for the homeland, his later stories gravitate towards cultural tensions and conflicts arising from multiple encounters between the Punjabi feudal mindset and the post-industrialised British society. After One Way, which had appeared a couple of years ago, Ret (Sand) is Harjit Atwal’s most recent, second major novel. Unlike One Way, which was something of the rites-of-the-passage novel, Ret shows a definite imprint of Atwal’s mature creativity, resourcefulness and technical virtuosity. Conceived as a double-voiced narrative, swinging back and forth between the two protagonists, Ravi and Kanwal, both of whom get equal space in the novel, Ret fits in rather well with Harjit Atwal’s later concerns, reflected as these are in a large body of his short fiction. There is no backward glancing here, nor are there any obvious signs of pining or longing for the homeland. Instead, this is the story of “de-cultured” drifters, whose several desperate bids to break out of their traditional mindset and breathe free, only push them deeper into other ghettos. These are not the social/cultural ghettos of cramped, self-inhibiting spaces, rather these are the shrinking ghettos within, largely of the character’s own making. Operating within such claustrophobic spaces, Harjit Atwal’s characters not only dare to dream but also try to make sense of their lives, values and/or relationships, without much success, of course. Ret is the story of Ravi, the eldest son of a subedar from a small township in the Doaba region, who, as a young student, had dreamt of going to England; the economic compulsions of his family fuelling his imagination as much his own ambition. His marriage to Kanwal, the daughter of an NRI Sikh family settled in Southall, London almost seemed to be a fulfillment of a long-cherished dream. But after Ravi lands in London, harsh economic realities begin to impinge, dealing his dreams one hard jolt after another. Ill-equipped to find himself a decent job, he has to depend on his wife’s family, at least, initially, even live with them in the same house. And the job he eventually gets isn’t really good enough for the young couple to set up own house. If this turns Kanwal into an incorrigible control freak, it makes a permanent emotional and psychological wreck out of Ravi. Much before they can start off their life together, their marriage is on the rocks, pushing Ravi to seek comfort in the arms of other women, and Kanwal into her father’s. Thereafter, for both, it is just a hopeless mirage across the deserts of ‘time,’ only a wasted hope for ever-dissolving, ever-shifting relationships, men and women blurring into images, and images turning into real men and women. Living away from Ravi, Kanwal is condemned to dream of him constantly, just as he had earlier lived with Kanwal and thought only of Beatrice, an English woman. It’s the story of how a small town boy Ravi turns into a big time skirt-chaser, and when he isn’t chasing skirts, he’s either seeking comfort in the bottle or drowning himself into work. Ravi’s colossal passion and appetite for life, which undoubtedly makes him a true-bred Punjabi, unleashes itself rather uninhibitedly in the free-for-all English society, in the process turning all women he meets into objects of lust and carnal gratification. Product of an open society, Kanwal is, however, more conservative and less experimental. She does go out and meet other men, but continues to feel responsible for her daughter Pratibha. Occasionally, she doesn’t even mind using her feminine wiles to inveigle financial as well as emotional favours out of her divorced husband. Both Ravi and Kanwal, it appears, have succumbed to the pressures of the commodified culture within which they now live, treating relationships as mere disposable commodities. Equally sympathetic to both viewpoints, Harjit Atwal does the balancing act very well, refusing to take sides or pass judgements. If, on the one hand, there are problems of economic survival, personal degradation and vulgarity, on the other, social prejudice, racial inequality and social exclusion also figure quite prominently. While Ravi does succeed in securing the affection of Beatrice, his English girl friend, he continues to be reviled by her adolescent son as a “Paki” or a “Black”. Kanwal doesn’t mind going steady with Andy, an English colleague of hers, but all her thoughts of marrying him remain just hopeless pipe-dreams, as the pressures of the family, tradition, social and cultural conditioning are simply too strong to be resisted. Though racism remains an occasional episode in the novel, it rankles in the consciousness of an average Punjabi or an Asian because of its exclusionary politics. Perhaps, this is where all the efforts of Atwal’s characters at overcoming the evils of their ghettoised existence or of breaking out of their traditional moulds or the desperate though valiant efforts at assimilation fall flat. And along with that, collapse the strident claims of the British society about its multiculturalism. In Ret, Harjit Atwal may not have actually succeeded in creating a modern Punjabi classic, but he has certainly managed to create a powerful, dissenting ‘novelistic discourse’ that critiques both Punjabi culture from within and English life from below. The author, a Professor of English at Panjab University, has many books of translation from Punjabi to English to his credit. |
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INTERVIEW HARJIT Atwal, the NRI author of “Ret”, is disturbed a lot as he observes the future of Punjabi culture and that of the Punjabi community settled abroad. There is an increasing feeling of alienation among middle-aged Punjabis. Punjabi youth, under the western influence, are joining the streams of lesbians and gays. Talking to The Tribune at his village Pharala in Nawanshahr district the other day, Harjit Atwal made an interesting revelation that stress-laden relationships among Punjabis settled abroad —which, incidentally, is the theme of “Ret”—are heading towards a rather unpleasant phase, because of a highly mechanised lifestyle and economic independence of individuals. “Husband-wife relationships are warmer here as compared to those in the West, where couples prefer not to be identified jointly. We, especially youngsters, are borrowing their concepts leading to more divorces and realignments, leading to the break-up of families. “Since our children are borrowing Western concepts, we fear that they might prefer to be lesbians or gays. To prevent this, many people even encourage their wards to have boy- or girl-friends so as to ensure that they don’t go astray. I know a Punjabi family whose all three children have turned either lesbians or gays despite their parents’ love for Punjabi culture and traditional approach,” says Atwal. “Ret” is the story of a young couple settling in England, their mutual problems, leading to divorce, the husband’s preference for another girl before he finally tries to overcome difficulties in the way of his reconciliation with his estranged wife. The novel is not set in the conventional rural backdrop, but primarily deals with the sensitivities of urban people, their life and their struggles. It has not, according to the author, projected anyone as a hero or a villain. Characters are simply as human beings. Elaborating, Harjit Atwal said, unlike other writers, his effort has been to portray a different England. “Overexposure and racial discrimination have not been dealt with since I felt that it was a different country than it was usually projected, maybe because of my good education and ability to grasp things in a better manner when I migrated in 1977. Melancholy has not been exploited knowingly,” he said. Atwal is a law graduate and a multi-faceted personality because of his ability to undertake different jobs —as a solicitor, a catering unit owner and owner of a general store apart from being the editor of “Shabad”, a London-based Punjabi magazine. Besides, he has authored “Sard Pairan Di Udeek,” his first book of poetry, five short stories and a travelogue,”
Safarnama”. Asked whether he considered “Ret” to be a turning point in the mainstream Punjabi literature, Harjit Atwal said, “I don’t know whether it is a turning point or not. If I say yes, it would be wrong. It is for the people to judge for themselves.” |
Several men betrayed Jesus —but not one woman. When Jesus was given to trial, among all his disciples the women alone played the man. But for a woman Jesus could not have been born; But for a woman perhaps he might never have risen again. The first name pronounced by the resurrected Jesus was: “Mary!” — Paul Richard, The Scourge of Christ |
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INTERVIEW
ALREADY into its third generation, the Punjabi short fiction in the U.K. is fairly well entrenched. Harjit Atwal is a worthy successor to the first generation of Punjabi immigrant writers, among them Raghbir Dhand, Tarsem Nilgiri, Swaran Chandan, Shivcharn Gill, Pritam Sidhu, Baldev Singh, Darshan Dheer et al.