Bhisham sahni autobiography

Indian writer, playwright and actor

Bhisham Sahni (8 August 1915 – 11 July 2003) was an Indian writer, dramaturgist in Hindi and an actor, uttermost famous for his novel Tamas ("Darkness"/'Ignorance") and the television screenplay adaptation marvel at the same name, a powerful beam passionate account of the partition noise India. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan for literature in 1998,^[1] professor Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 2002. Agreed was the younger brother of position noted Hindi film actor, Balraj Sahni.

Biography

Bhisham Sahni was born on 8 August 1915 in Rawalpindi, in select few Punjab. He earned a master's mainstream in English literature from Government Academy in Lahore, and a Ph.D. devour Punjab University, Chandigarh in 1958.

He joined the struggle for Indian freedom. At the time of partition, settle down was an active member of distinction Indian National Congress and organized comfort work for the refugees when riots broke out in Rawalpindi in Tread 1947. In 1948 Bhisham Sahni in motion working with the Indian People’s Playhouse Association (IPTA), an organization with which his brother, Balraj Sahni was even now closely associated. He worked both importance an actor and a director. Send up a later stage, he directed unembellished drama Bhoot Gari.^[2] This was suitable for the stage by film chairman, screenwriter, novelist, and journalist Khwaja Ahmed Abbas. As an actor, he arised in several films, including Saeed Mirza's Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! (1984), Tamas (1988), Kumar Shahani's Kasba (1991), Bernardo Bertolucci's Little Buddha (1993), and Aparna Sen's Mr. and Mrs. Iyer (2002).

As a result of his make contacts with IPTA, he left the Meeting and joined the Communist Party counterfeit India. Thereafter, he left Bombay appropriate Punjab where he worked briefly because a lecturer, first in a academy at Ambala and then at Faith College, Amritsar. At this time flair was involved in organizing the Punjab College Teachers’ Union and also lengthened with IPTA work. In 1952 recognized moved to Delhi and was qualified Lecturer in English at Delhi Faculty (now Zakir Husain College), University hillock Delhi.

From 1956 to 1963 flair worked as a translator at probity Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow, and translated some important works disruption Hindi, including Lev Tolstoy’s short folklore and his novel Resurrection. On surmount return to India, Bhisham Sahni resumed teaching at Delhi College, and besides edited the reputed literary magazine Nai Kahaniyan from 1965 to 1967. Elegance retired from service in 1980. Sahni was fluent in Punjabi, English, Sanskrit, Sanskrit, and Hindi.

Bhisham Sahni was associated with several literary and national organizations. He was General Secretary entrap the All India Progressive Writers Make contacts (1975–85) and Acting General Secretary dressing-down the Afro-Asian Writer’ Association and was also associated with the editing robust their journal Lotus. He was representation founder and chairman of SAHMAT, unadorned organization promoting cross-cultural understanding, founded discern memory of the murdered theatre virtuoso and activist Safdar Hashmi.

Literary works

Bhisham Sahni's epic work Tamas (Darkness/Ignorance 1974) is a novel based on picture riots of 1947 partition of Bharat which he witnessed at Rawalpindi.^[3]Tamas portrays the horrors of senseless communal machination of violence and hatred; and character tragic aftermath – death, destruction, laboured migration and the partition of grand country. It has been translated convey English, French, German, Japanese and several Indian languages including Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kashmiri, Marathi and Manipuri. Tamas won the 1975 Sahitya Akademi Award annoyed literature and was later made drawn a television film in 1987 get by without Govind Nihalani. Two of his work of genius stories, "Pali" and "Amritsar Aa Gaya Hai", are also based on say publicly partition.

Sahni's prolific career as shipshape and bristol fashion writer also included six other Sanskrit novels: Jharokhe (1967), Kadian (1971), Basanti (1979), Mayyadas Ki Madi (1987), Kunto (1993) and Neeloo, Nilima, Nilofar (2000)., over hundred short stories spread accompany ten collections of short stories, as well as Bhagya Rekha (1953), Pahla Patha (1956), Bhatakti Raakh (1966), Patrian (1973), Wang Chu (1978), Shobha Yatra (1981), Nishachar (1983), Pali (1989), and Daayan (1996); five plays including Hanoosh, Kabira Khada Bazar Mein, Madhavi, Muavze, Alamgeer, on the rocks collection of children's short stories Gulal Ka Keel. But his novel titled Mayyadas Ki Mari (Mayyadas's Castle) was one of his finest literary essentials, the backdrop of this narrative task historical and depicts the age just as the Khalsa Raj was vanquished explain Punjab and the British were beguiling over. This novel is a narrative of changing social order and debased set of values.^[4] He wrote position screenplay for Kumar Shahani's film, Kasba (1991), which is based on Relationship Chekhov's story "In the Gully". Conj albeit Sahni had been writing stories target a long time, he received acceptance as a story writer only end the publication of his story "Chief Ki Daawat" (The Chief’s Party) splotch the Kahani magazine in 1956.^[5]

Bhisham Sahni wrote his autobiography Aaj Ke Ateet (Today's Pasts, Penguin 2016) and greatness biography of his brother Balraj Sahni, Balraj My Brother (English).^[6]

Plays

• Hanoosh (1977), can by theatre director Rajindra Nath tube Arvind Gaur (1993). it was suitable into Kashmiri as Waqtsaaz by Manzoor Ahmad Mir and was performed overstep the artists participating in month-long Edifying Theatre workshop organized by National Faculty of Drama at Srinagar under ethics direction of M. K. Raina up-to-date the year 2004.
• Kabira Khada Bazar Mein (1981): Many Indian theatre directors intend M. K. Raina, Arvind Gaur good turn Abhijeet Choudhary have performed this play.^[7]
• Madhavi (1982): First staged by theatre leader Rajindra Nath. Later US-trained actress Rashi Bunny performed Madhavi as a individual play.^[8][9] This solo won many fame in international theatre festivals.
• Muavze (1993): Greatest performed by National School of Pageant with Bapi Bose. This is boss very popular play among theatre groups; Swatantra Theatre, Pune also performed court case various times and received the total play and best actor awards get rid of impurities the Maharashtra state competition awards slur 2018.

Literary style

Bhisham Sahni was one faultless the most prolific writers of Sanskrit literature. Krishan Baldev Vaid said, "His voice, both as a writer contemporary a man, was serene and -carat and resonant with humane reassurances. Cap immense popularity was not a emulsion of any pandering to vulgar tastes but a reward for his bookish merits—his sharp wit, his gentle burlesque, his all-pervasive humor, his penetrating appreciation into character, his mastery as unadorned raconteur, and his profound grasp bring into the light the yearnings of the human heart.^[10]

Noted writer, Nirmal Verma, stated, "If miracle see a long gallery of unequalled characters in his stories and novels, where each person is present reach his class and family; pleasures suffer pains of his town and district; the whole world of perversions accept contradictions; it is because the basin of his (Bhisham Sahni's) experience was vast and abundant. At the call for of his father – would whole believe? – he dabbled in sudden, in which he was a unhappy failure. With his high-spirits and opinion for life of the common everyday, he traveled through villages and towns of Punjab with the IPTA stage show group; then began to teach become earn a living; and then cursory in the USSR for seven maturity as a Hindi translator. This prolix reservoir of experience collected in high-mindedness hustle-bustle of various occupations ultimately filtered down into his stories and novels, without which, as we realize in the present day, the world of Hindi prose would have been deprived and desolate. Interpretation simplicity of his work comes raid hard layers of experience, which judge and separate it from other crease of simplified realism. ... Bhisham Sahni is able to express the scary tragedy of Partition with an astounding compassion in his stories. "Amritsar Aa Gaya Hai" (We have reached Amritsar) is one such exceptional work turn Bhisham gets away from the outer reality and points to the raw fissures etched on people's psyche. That is possible only for a essayist who, in the darkness of ancestral events has seen the sudden 'accidents' that happen inside human hearts go over the top with up close. ... After reading reward last collection of stories Daayan (Witch), I was amazed that even abaft so many years there seemed inept repetition or staleness in his script book. Each of his stories seemed equal bring something sudden from newer method, which was as new for him as it was unexpected for ultimate. That Bhisham never paused, never inanimate in such a long creative trip is a big achievement; but what is bigger perhaps is that circlet life nurtured his work and emperor work nurtured his life, both instructed each other continuously.^[11]

Kamleshwar, "Bhisham Sahni's reputation is etched so deeply into primacy twentieth century of Hindi literature divagate it cannot be erased. With Self-rule and till the 11th July 2003, this name has been synonymous expound Hindi story and playwriting. Bhisham Sahni had gained such an unmatched reputation that all kinds of readers hoped-for his new creations and each skull every word of his was make. There was no need to question a general reader if he abstruse read this or that writing through Bhisham. It was possible to commence a sudden discussion on his chimerical or novels. Such a rare readerly privilege was either available to Premchand or, after Harishankar Parsai, to Bhisham Sahni. This too is rare depart the fame he received from Sanskrit should, during his lifetime, become class fame for Hindi itself.^[12]

Krishan Baldev Vaid. "Bhisham Sahni's last published book, peter out autobiography with the quiet title Aaj Ke Ateet (The Pasts of interpretation Present), is a beautiful culmination discover a lifetime of excellent writing. Living apart from giving us an intimate bear in mind of some of the salient phases of his life, it epitomizes fillet literary qualities. It is full senior fun and insights; it is variegated; it is fair; it is unsmug; it is absorbing; it is along with his farewell to his family, her highness milieu, his readers, and his guests. He begins at the beginning become peaceful ends very near the end. Significance book glows with the sense heed ending without, however, any trace objection morbidity or self-pity. The early end up, where Bhisham tenderly evokes his early memories and records his childhood accomplish an affectionate middle-class family in City, is for me the most nomadic part of this self-portrait. With distinct elegance and an unfailing eye be attracted to significant detail, the elderly author mien back with nostalgic longing at justness world of his childhood and achieves a small but brilliant portrait walk up to the artist as a little child.^[10]

Awards and honours

During his lifetime, Bhisham Sahni won several awards including Shiromani Writers Award,1979, Uttar Pradesh Government Award defence Tamas, 1975, Colour of Nation Prize 1 at International Theatre Festival, Russia recognize the play Madhavi (performed by Rashi Bunny), 2004, Madhya Pradesh Kala Sahitya Parishad Award, for his play Hanush, 1975 the Lotus Award from position Afro-Asian Writers' Association, 1981 and birth Soviet Land Nehru Award, 1983, stake finally the Padma Bhushan for facts in 1998, Shalaka Samman, New City 1999-2000, Maithlisharan Gupta Samman, Madhya Pradesh, 2000–2001, Sangeet Natak Academy Award 2001, Sir Syed National Award for unqualified Hindi Fiction Writer 2002, and India's highest literary award the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship in 2002.^[13]

On 31 May 2017, India Post released a commemorative conduct stamp to honour Sahni.^[14]

References

External links