While doing random surfing on facebook today, I saw a picture remembering Premchand (Some people including me really have nothing to do). Premchand, probably biggest name in Hindi literature, is one of my favourite authors.There have been many great Hindi Urdu writers including Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Mahadevi Verma, Jai Shankar Prasad and probably many more I don’t know or remember about but Premchand will always have a special place. His ability to depict emotions is what separated him from the rest. in class 10, as a part of coursework we were expected to remember life story of few authors, Premchand was one of them. In his life story I never forgot to mention this very special trait of his writing with an example from his story “Poos Ki Raat” where he used an analogy of seeing wolf to portray fear on the face of a character (I hope you will not mind me forgetting the name of that character)
I don’t remember most of my textbook learning apart from generic things like Grammar (Only English, Thanks to CAT and corporate communications), Science and Maths which I have to repeat every now and then. But Premchand stories are different. In my Hindi course I read only 2 of them (as far as I remember) in my textbooks “Do Bailo Ki Katha and “Poos Ki Raat”. I distinctly remember the bulls ‘Heera’ and ‘Moti’, main protagonist of the first story and their journey which started when they were separated from their original master (Due to who else, his wife) and hardship they faced during the journey back home. Second one was a story of poor farmer who let go his standing crop because it was too difficult to get out of comfort of his bed, kambal and campfire during a chilly North indian winter.
His Stories and Novels are probably best Hindi literature we have (of course apart from translated Ramayan and Mahabharat). It is sad that most of us (self proclaimed readers who know Hindi) ignore quality Hindi literature and focus solely on substandard English crap. Probably because of our brains are hardwired to demean our culture and idolise everything English.
I make a promise to myself that i will start reading Hindi literature and may be someday write something as well.
For those who are interested can find collection of Premchand here
