This charming memoir is a loving homage to a grand institution and its legendary gurus. Written from the perspective of a child and young girl, it retains the freshness and innocence of an age when experimental education was not merely a trendy movement. Shivani’s vivid pictures of Shantiniketan and portraits of her teachers and fellow students remain as alive as they seemed when she first wrote this memoir nearly fifty years ago. Along with the moving tributes she wrote when some of her beloved contemporaries passed away, this slim memoir is a sort of diptych that captures the spirit of the Ashram and the liveliness of its inmates, many of whom went on to become iconic Indians. Shivani's recall of her time there takes the reader into an enchanted garden that remains as inspirational to her as it was when she went there all the way from Kumaon a lifetime ago.
GAURA PANT 'SHIVANI (1923–2003) was among the foremost Hindi writers of her time. Born in Rajkot, her childhood was spent in various places as her father moved from one princely state to another. As a young child, she was tutored by her scholar grandfather, Pandit Hariram Pande, a close associate of Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya and one of the founding faculty members of Banaras Hindu University. At the age of twelve, she was sent, along with her two siblings, to Shantiniketan, where she spent nine magical years. Throughout her life, Shivani lived by the teachings of her gurus at the Ashram and looked upon Bengal as her second home. Her literary output that spans some forty works bears the deep imprint of both Kumaon and Bengal. Best known for her short stories, novels and newspaper columns, Shivani also wrote several travelogues and a three-part autobiography. She was awarded the Padma Shri in 1982.
IRA PANDE started her career as a lecturer in Panjab University, and later worked with several prominent Englishlanguage publishing houses. Her last editorial stint was as chief editor of the India International Centre's Publication Division. In 2005, she wrote a memoir of her mother titled Diddi: My Mother's Voice, documenting the life and times of Shivani. In 2010, she got the Sahitya Akademi Award for her translation of Manohar Shyam Joshi's T’ta Professor, which also won the Crossword Book Award for translation. She writes a regular column for the Tribune.
Amader Shantiniketan was written by our mother, Shivani, sometime in the early 1960s and published by New Age Publishers, Calcutta. Although I do not remember that time very clearly, I am pretty sure that it was neither circulated widely nor promoted, since in those days books were never pushed as aggressively as they are now. The publishers also never thought it necessary to give Shivani a royalty, information about any subsequent editions or details of sales. Shivani was a strangely trusting soul and once she handed over a book to a publisher, she seldom inquired about how it was doing or whether it had been reviewed. So that was that.
Mercifully, the publishers shut shop one day and, quite in keeping with their quaint work ethic, did not think it fit to inform Shivani of what would happen to her book. There was another twist in this tale: my mother always wrote by hand and submitted a handwritten manuscript to her publishers without bothering to keep a copy. I have no idea how she managed to get another publisher to bring out a fresh edition. Perhaps she dug out a personal copy to give them a master file. Whatever the truth, this charming memoir is among the books we inherited after her death when her estate was transferred to us four siblings according to her will.
My sister Mrinal worked meticulously on every book, editing each one beautifully and working closely with the new publishers to ensure that the books were elegantly brought out. It is largely thanks to her efforts that there is a handsome set of Shivani's complete works in the market today. Our effort now is to get as many of them translated into English as we can so that a new generation of readers—many of whom do not read Hindi any more—can access her work. A few years ago, I translated some of her short stories and essays into English to form the core of my memoir of her life, Diddi: My Mother's Voice. It was so warmly received that I did another one a few years later, titled Apradhini: Women without Men, on a remarkable collection of stories and essays she had written on jailed women. I fear that our general attitude to translated works is so dismissive that it did not reach out to the readers I would have liked to interest. Perhaps, one day, its karma will ensure it gets the attention it so richly deserves.
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