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Deeply Human Depiction of Socio-Economic Reality in Punjabi Short Stories
Writers in local languages are closer to socio-economic realities, particularly of villages, offering deeply moving situations and scenes.
Writers in local languages are closer to socio-economic realities, particularly of villages, offering deeply moving situ
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We are all familiar with how painful it is for a farmer to lose his land, so one can imagine the inner turbulence of a farmer who has not only been forced to sell his ancestral land due to economic compulsions but is additionally forced by continuing economic difficulties to accept temporary work as a landless farm worker on the same plot of land.
This is the situation in which Rakha Singh finds himself on a sad day on the outskirts of his village in Punjab, as depicted in a short story by Balbir Parwana titled Beri Wala Khet (translated as ‘the farm with the berry tree’). He has to finish a lot of work in the day but he cannot help thinking time and again about the days when this was his own land, and discussing memories with his friend passing by or with his wife Manglo, who belatedly brings his lunch. Small matters reflect wider changes. Rakha and Manglo are shocked that even the berry tree on this small farm has been handed over by the new rich landowner to a contractor for harvesting its fruit, while despite their poverty, they had allowed anyone passing by to eat the berries freely.
Such poignant moments of life occur repeatedly in several Punjabi short stories I read recently, even though I could only read these in Hindi translation. In fact, while reading stories from several Indian languages, including South Indian languages with which I am less familiar, frequently very moving situations and scenes have brought tears to my eyes, even though I was reading them in English or Hindi translation. The reason, as I understand, is that writers in local languages are closer to socio-economic realities, particularly of villages. Hence, many more efforts should be made so that people in India, with its rich diversity of languages and dialects, can read the literature of other regions in translated versions, and Hindi can be a very useful link language for this. for this.
To come back to the subject of deeply moving Punjabi stories, we cannot, of course, forget ‘Thakavat’ (tiredness) by Gurbachan Singh Bhullar. This is the story of Aaso whose husband died when she was only 30, leaving her with the responsibility of bringing up her son. Since then Aaso has not known what it means to rest. Her life has become an unending story of toil and work. Other villagers say—’Why don’t you take some rest now that your son is growing up. But Aaso relentlessly works to ensure a better future for her son. Then one day there is a tender moment, a fleeting but beautiful moment in the life of her son—and suddenly Aaso feels that she can now take all the rest she had been denying herself all these years. Now dear reader, please hold your curiosity. I am not going to tell you here what that tender moment was, because to reveal this would be to give away the entire story. So you can guess, or better still, read the original story.
I could not hold back my tears when I read a very moving, also a very short story by Navtej Singh titled Bholu Ki Chithi (Letter of Bholu). It is about the very deep feelings of a small child Bholu in a remote village of Punjab. Bholu’s father was a freedom fighterNationalist ActivistAn individual who actively participates in a struggle to achieve political freedom or independence for their country, often against colonial rule. who struggled in a colonial jail and died from illness. The family later loses its farmland too. Meanwhile India becomes a free country. Economic distress of this family continues. Bholu’s grandpa is ill. The doctor recommends pure cow milk to him, but the family cannot buy this every day. Bholu learns about national leaders at school and has an idea. He writes a letter to Mahatma Gandhi to kindly recommend to Jawaharlal Nehru to send his family a cow and when he grows up, then he’ll pay for this.
Sometimes social aspects are emphasized in literature and sometimes economic aspects are emphasized. It is rare that the socio-economic reality of a farmer’s life across a generation is captured in terms of interactions and the intermingling of both social and economic factors in deeply human terms. However, this has been achieved very successfully in Baljinder Nasrali’s story Agar Apni Manasthiti Kahun (If I reveal my inner feelings). In fact, this has been done so well that the reader feels very close to the aging farmer, the narrator of the story.
‘Jahaaz wali tanki’ by Ajmer Sidhu is a very realistic and disturbing portrayal of a Punjabi villager who pins all his hopes on finding a job in a Western country but is betrayed. In his story Bulbuliyon Ki Kheti (Farming Bubbles) Kesra Ram presents a realistic portrayal of a young farmer attracted by the stock marketEquity MarketA public market for the trading of company stock and derivatives at an agreed price; it allows companies to raise capital and investors to trade shares. to such an extent that he is willing to sell his farmland to invest in shares.
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