Punjabi review
Fascinating lives
Shalini Rawat

Kis Kis Taranh de Sikandar
by Gurbachan. Lokgeet Parkashan. Pages 256. Rs 150.

“There are some who don’t know how to be important. They act normal even when they become important. Their characters are hidden in the nobility of their silence…”, writes the author. The nobility of its silence is what is so touching about the book. Not that books of regional literature arrive with rave reviews, news about fat advances or worldwide book–reading sessions. The peripherals are entirely unnecessary. Everyone knows no one reads regional literature.

This book does not even carry the standard foreword or introduction. No two-inch felicitations by the who’s who of the publishing world, no clarifications by the author. Without a fuss, it just tiptoes into the readers’ consciousness. The writing, however, gives away the brilliance of the humility-draped work.

The collection of essays has, no doubt, touched new heights in a genre which is neither plain vanilla literary criticism nor a collection of character sketches of eminent contemporary writers and poets, but a mixture of the two. Do a little armchair time-travel, rub elbows with the upper crust of Punjabi literature and acquaint yourself with the less-known personalities of Punjabi literature. Each essay is a nugget of information in its own right.

With this astonishingly refreshing guidebook, you need not have ‘read’ Lal Singh Dil, Harnam, Veena Verma or even Paash and Preetlari for that matter, to be curious about them. Their personalities are revealed in a new matrix that is at once studied and informal, unfolding gently like petals in the morning dew. What makes the book an engaging read is that even while deconstructing the subject’s personality to the last atom, the author has not let go of the essence of their characters. So that in sketching these artists, the book becomes a work of art in itself.

Balwant Gargi and Amrita Pritam (right) are among the literary figures that the author talks about

It is as if Gurbachan sits the writers/characters in a frame, scoops them out whole with their surrounding history and space, and serves them, warts and all. So now you know of the times in which these writers have lived and breathed, their compulsions, both inner and outer, and have a peek into their literary styles as well as their contributions.

And yet everything is done in a tone so controlled and the writing is so grounded, you can barely keep up with the subtle wit, the wonderful metaphors, and the aphorisms it concocts along the way. He teases Gargi, Amrita Pritam and Bali Gill on the ‘metropolitisation’ of their names one minute and the next, he is minutely detailing why and how these writers were affected by romanticism, realism or the Naxalite movement.

Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari’s doomed Utopian project of Preet Nagars (and how and why it failed), Ajit Cour’s tantalising personality, Sant Singh Sekhon’s duality, Nirupma Dutt’s brand of feminism, Mahinder Singh Sarna’s lucidity — he has them all stacked in neat little categories. No wonder the prequel Sahit de Sikandar was equally popular in that both these books historicise our literary giants in all their quaintness.

Of course, you can blame him for being descriptive and subjective. Anyone who wrote in the first person and with such force and finality would be. Moral of the book: connect with your mother/father tongue, ignore the isms and read on.

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