There is a cultural curiosity in contemporary times to explore and enjoy our regional literature, even if the new space created for its flourishing is interlinked with business interests, promotions, and prizes. The sole intention of this work, however, is to connect with the reader.
My father, Pritam Singh, migrated to Delhi from Preet Nagar, near the Wagah border, after the partition of India. His friend. Dr M. S. Randhawa then the deputy commissioner of Delhi-helped him acquire office premises in Chandni Chowk, where he established his firm, Navyug Publishers. This became a literary hub for Punjabi writers. Most of the writers included in this collection frequented his office (as he was their publisher and editor of the prestigious literary magazine Arsee). I often went to his office after school hours and keenly listened in on the writers' conversations. They spoke about the travails of their love lives, monetary miseries, and current projects. I was drawn to Papaji's adda as I was smitten with books and the office provided a stimulating atmosphere for my emotional development. The writers infused their words with power and, at times, impetuous actions, transmuting lived experiences into fiction. Little did I realize then that one day I would have to string together the stories written by these writers into a book.
Balbir Madhopuri (my co-editor) and I have undertaken the daunting task of weaving this volume together based on writers' recommendations, aesthetic experience, and selective memory. Four generations of Punjabi writers have been covered in this collection. The exclusion of other popular and celebrated writers is by no means due to an underestimation of their capacity to reveal the hidden realities of human lives or of their contribution to the corpus of this genre. Rather, we hope that uninitiated readers will be able to sense the essence of the Punjabi literary imagination and Punjabiyat in the rural-urban continuum/divide presented in these stories. We invite you to this act of 'communion'. While Balbir and I may have different opinions about certain issues, methodologies, and literary agendas, this selection is all the more richer for it. Nevertheless, the biggest danger here is the loss of melody, meaning, energy, and spirit of language-a limitation we humbly accept. Needless to say, the churning of this collection has resulted from the availability of limited time and space.
The capital of India was shifted from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911. Delhi, a union territory now, was carved out from the former Punjab. Pakistan and India partitioned the remaining area of Punjab. Today, a sizeable section of Punjabi-speaking people still resides in Delhi, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh. Punjabi is spoken by about 152 million native speakers around the world, of which almost 40 million reside in India and 111 million reside in Pakistan." It is the fourth most widely spoken language in the UK as well as in Canada where it registered a 49 per cent growth between 2016 and 2021.
The modern literary perspective in Punjabi was pioneered by Bhai Vir Singh (1872-1957) although earlier writings of Sheikh Farid (1173-1266) are currently available in print and are an integral part of the Shri Guru Granth Sahib. Vir Singh's couplets contain references to God, morality, and spirituality. Moreover, the Sikh Gurus structured their poetic works on the basis of metre, rhyme, ragas, and alliteration. Guru Nanak, a poet, used analogies from nature, verdure, as well as pastoral aesthetics and activities to propound his philosophy. The Muslim fakirs (Sufis) and poets of romantic tales (kissa poets) combined the divine with worldliness in their works. Shah Hussain, Sultan Bahu, Bulleh Shah, and others are some of the most famous lyrical poets.
Most of the twentieth century modern Punjabi writers included in this collection were influenced by the Progressive Movement in Punjabi literature. The Progressive Movement, secular in nature, aimed to resist imperialism, feudalism, theism, caste and untouchability, communalism, and oppression of women.
In Punjab, the major centres of progressive literary activity in the 1930s were in Lahore and Amritsar. Gurbaksh Singh, an engineer who returned from the US after receiving his educational degree (and the first contributor in this volume), and later became a full-time writer, established Preet Nagar in Amritsar in 1935 (inspired by Tagore's vision of Shantiniketan) with an eclectic community that was inspired by his idealism and utopian vision. The Progressive Writers' Movement drew well-known Punjabi writers into its fold, both as cosmopolitan members and ideologues of modernism.
Besides the Marxist and Freudian interpretation of personal, social, economic, and political realities, literary movements like surrealism, expressionism, existentialism, structuralism, and post-modernism left a mark on Punjab's literary output, and yet it retained its cultural complexion. Humanism, nevertheless, remains a powerful thread in the Punjabi narrative tradition.
The Punjabi short story, merely a century old, is an important part of Punjabi modern literature. In the Punjabi sociocultural context, many aspects of human issues and concerns form its constituent elements and, symbolically, Punjabi philosophical thought and life-world emerges vividly through descriptive accounts. One must confess though that through translation these stories have acquired a new and different flavour.
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