Her contribution to Indian literature transcends all cultural boundaries. Known as much for her individualistic women characters as their refreshing candour, Krishna Sobti is a trailblazer. We present the author in conversation with Reema Anand, the award-winning translator of her work, Dil-O-Danish

 
Her readers have met her through her indomitable and outspoken characters. The grand dame of Hindi literature, Krishna Sobti, 87, is doughty and dauntless, much like the characters she has birthed. The glint in her eyes stands testimony to the iron will housed in her frail frame. Truant grey strands break free from her woollen cap as she leans on the sofa at her home in a quiet corner of New Delhi’s Mayur Vihar.

In 2006, I had the honour of receiving the Hutch Crossword Book Award for Indian Language Fiction Translation, along with Sobtiji, for The Heart Has its Reasons—the translation of Dil-O-Danish. A year later, we met again to give away the award at Nehru Planetarium in Mumbai. Her speech, delivered to a packed auditorium, gave an insight into the writer and woman she is. “A genuine writer must have a clear soul,” she said. “The deepest part of a creative writer is his or her honesty. It is important to reach the truth and look into the realities of life and not just skim the surface.”

Sobti has always posed a challenge to her contemporaries, critics and the established genre of writing. She chose to dwell on subjects that were swept under the carpet. Her power-packed works Mitro Marjani, Ai Ladki, Zindaginama, Surajmukhi Andhere Ke, Dil-O-Danish and Hum Hashmat, among others, held a mirror to society. Her characters, grounded in reality, echoed a real world. While Mitro, the married protagonist of Mitro Marjani, shook conventions in 1960 with her unequivocal desire, Samay Sargam (2000) dealt with the lives of two lonely senior citizens, the friendship they strike up and the problems they face in a fast-changing world. Such has been the popularity of her works that they have been translated into English, Punjabi, Urdu, Swedish and Russian.

When she started writing from a rented room on the first floor of Delhi’s Sapru House, Sobti realised the limited options available to a writer. At the same time, she knew that there was place for someone like her in the world of literature. Gradually, she created a vast world of her own, peopled with plucky characters who spoke an earthy idiom that found resonance with her readers. Such has been her oeuvre that she defies classification. Sensitive to a multitude of causes and concerns, irrespective of gender, race or religion, she perceives life in its ab-solute complexity. In her hands, language becomes a profound tool to convey the message. While it takes on a Punjabi flavour in Zindaginama, in Mitro Marjani it takes on Rajasthani nuances. Speaking about her literary style, Sobti says, “Just because one’s writing does not fall into the recognised genre, it doesn’t mean it’s not good. It is very important to satisfy the writer’s instinct.”

Zindaginama, a chronicle of Partition, which won her the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980, teems with the ethos of pre-Partition rural Punjab that Sobti experienced while growing up in her ancestral haveli in Gujarat in West Punjab (now in Pakistan). Although her writings are hued by the pain of the times, Sobti believes that writers should rise above personal grief and tragedy. Her writing has met its match in that of her spiritual double, Hashmat, who usurped her pen and thoughts while becoming the chronicler of a modern world. Thus, came into being Hum Hashmat, a compilation of pen portraits of writers and friends.

“As a writer, I confront, I struggle, I discover, I define and refine and then with the help of language I create my text. If a writer is gifted, he or she can touch a dream, a vision, a cry of pain and the innocent laughter of happiness,” admits the iconoclast who declined the Padma Bhushan in 2010, out of her need to maintain a distance from the establishment and preserve her identity and integrity as a writer. Sobti also served as a consultant for Buniyaad, a television serial based on Partition.

Today, Sobti lives with her long-time companion-turned-husband, former bu-reaucrat Shivanath, who also happens to be a published author in English and Dogri languages. His latest work is Reminiscences of a Jammuite. Excerpts from an exclusive interview:

Besides Partition and migration, which form the backdrop of most of your stories, what are the other sources?

My generation was not a bystander. It was caught up in historical events like Independence after a long struggle and a great divide. History was chasing our subcontinent with tension and conflicts leading to unprecedented violence and migration. It was difficult to forget Partition; dangerous to remember it. I wrote only two short stories on Partition, Sikka Badal Gaya and Meri Maa Kahan Hai. The latter is still found in some anthologies as a memory of mass migration. My creative responses have been deeply rooted in electric and integrated human experiences.

The subjects you chose to write on have always been much ahead of their times. How did your spirit cope with the critique’s lobby at those times?

My critics say I celebrate life in my writing. My cult has never been woven around fear and despair. All human beings deserve a better world than what we have today. There is an urgent need to even out the differences between the rich and the poor. Critics understand that creative people have different ways of touching reality and creating the ultimate vision. The intense lingering images, our artistic capacities, intellectual capabilities and inner energies, all combine to weave the human narrative. All these demand an expression of power and a vision. A writer has to explore and touch reality with unusual flashes like a poet.

How do you mentally sectionalise each of your themes, so that each work doesn’t intrude on the preceding or successive themes?

My relationship with my creative reality is through my ‘thinking vision’. While working on a new text, I remember that the texts published under my signature have been read by my readers and critics. I also know that no one is exempt from creative failings. A book or theme, once published, is over with me.

How do you strategise your work? And how much of autobiographical elements do you allow in it?

Creative writing is the result of a complex cerebral activity that emerges from intellectual and emotional activity. This, in turn, emerges out of an idea and the transformation of reality. I never attempt to start with a well-thought-out theme or design. I situate myself as an alert recorder of life and wait for the narrative to unfold itself. It is almost shedding half of your authorial rights to the characters because the other half is consciously conceded to the emerging text. As my own person, I give freedom to my emerging characters, so that they are free in their movement and speak their silences without inhibition. A writer’s first-hand im-pression and expression are deeply independent. Any two individuals could confront or experience a similar situation, but their narrative could be different! On the autobiographical front, a writer has to route the text by selecting from and reflecting on the sum total of not only personal experiences but also wider concerns. This crucial inward journey provides a huge panorama to the writer and his writings.

It is believed that for many years your life revolved around Zindaginama alone….

Zindaginama is life documented in its enormity. While writing the book, I tried to focus on a precise visual and dramatic recall in the form of a peasant speech. The simple use of the visible and the audible created a world of its own. All I wanted to paint was the surge of humanity—their strong rustic faces, their noise. I had to create the vocabulary for them, rough and potent, with the help of the rural dialect. The language one speaks is not just the taught one which is grammatically skilful, it also comprises what one has experienced and imbibed in life! All this I practiced in Zindaginama. I believe that every word has a body, a soul and a deep vibrant rhythm and life of its own. It is for the writer to pick up the right vibrating text. This book is also close to my heart, because I fought for its title for 26 years in the Court. I was facing a strong Punjabi writers’ lobby who believed Amrita Pritam had a right to the title. I won in the end and published Zindaginama under its actual name. During the long wait for the case to be solved, I wrote Dil-O-Danish.

What are your thoughts on regional literature and young authors writing in English?

Regional literature leaves its nuance when trans-created in English. Similarly, when writers from different cultures write in English or Hindi, they bring the regional flavour to the language, which is very attractive. English or rather Brit English was always spoken by the elite and was the language of the administration. Hindi, on the other hand, was the language of the common man, and this helped build up a huge base in India. Regional literature is much more energetic intellectually and is presenting new trends in innovative ways because of intermingling of people from different regions. This is creating a new linguistic romance.

You have been in the forefront of activism as well, protesting against the distortion of history in school textbooks.

The archival papers and official reports are official versions of the happenings, but the collective sources comprising the version of common citizens are also immensely valuable. A creative writer must touch the collective memory and consciousness of the people side by side. He/she must know the difference between official history and the unstated history. History has an ideological function too. A dangerous element is growing within various political parties, which seeks to assert and interpret history according to their respective agenda. Some of them are mixing mythology with history, unmindful of the plurality of democracy. Exaggerating differences does not help anyone.

Where do you think we are headed as a society?

I am a creative writer. I have no pretence; neither as a thinker nor as a scholar. All I know is that our society is in turmoil. The old values are fast changing, but the various dimensions to this change in our social set-up are good for democracy. They are transforming thoughts and reactions into a mass movement. This process is likely to bring the high-caste narrative and the low-caste narrative of Indian life to a certain degree of equality.

For years, you have had a literary alter-ego, Hashmat. How does it help you creatively to see, feel and write as another person?

Hashmat is my spiritual double. I do believe in the age-old concept of Ardh-Narishwar. Bisexuality is not only a fantasy of a complex being; it is a reality in creative arts. I am my own person, but when I am at my table, I am the other. When the first line appears on the paper, the space is slotted for both the writer and the text. No overstepping is permitted. The third volumn of Hum Hashmat has been recently published.

As a writer, what unique methodology do you follow?

I work at night. It is the idea that dominates my table. Next is the language, vibrating through words. It needs great restraint and merciless accuracy to find the right expression with right words. I make three drafts. The first is done, when the flash is on. My second draft is necessary for making the corrections. Sometimes a few changes can make all the difference. Relying heavily on the first, I compare the third with the first one. Usually, the first and the third are closer to each other. After the final draft is ready, I always read aloud the complete text in one sitting. So I can say I am my own critic!

What are you working on right now?

At present I am working on a short novella about the days when I was a governess to the child Maharaja, Tej Singh of Sirohi State in Mount Abu, Rajasthan. Let us see how well I can touch those difficult days post-Partition. Interestingly, I then had a chance to meet three legal luminaries— K M Munshi, Seetalvad and Amin—at Swarup Vilas Palace to discuss the dispute over Tej Singh’s succession.

MAJOR WORKS

• Dara Se Bichuri: 1958
• Mitro Marjani: 1960
• Yaaron Ke Yaar: 1968
• Teen Pahar: 1968
• Surajmukhi Andhere Ke: 1972
• Zindaginama: 1979
• Baadalon Ke Ghere: 1980
• Ai Ladki:1991
• Dil-O-Danish: 1993
• Samay Sargam: 2000
• Jenny Meherban Singh: 2007
• Budh Ka Kamandal: Ladakh: 2012

NOTABLE AWARDS

• Sahitya Akademi Award: 1980
• Shiromani Award: 1981
• Hindi Academy Award: 1982
• Sahitya Akademi Fellowship: 1996
• Katha Chudamani Award: 1999
• Shalaka Award: 2000-2001
• Vyasa Samman: 2008

Photo courtesy: Ananya Mann
Featured in Harmony — Celebrate Age Magazine
March 2013