The twenty-five stories in The Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told represent the finest short fiction in Hindi literature. Selected and translated by editor, writer, and translator Poonam Saxena, and ranging from early literary masters of the form such as Premchand, Chandradhar Sharma Guleri, Bhisham Sahni, Harishankar Parsai, Mannu Bhandari, and Shivani to contemporary greats such as Asghar Wajahat, Uday Prakash, Sara Rai, and others, the collection has stories of darkness, hope, triumph, anger, and irony.
In Premchand's 'The Thakur's Well', 'low-caste' Gangi struggles to find drinking water for her ill husband; in 'The Times Have Changed' by Krishna Sobti, the matriarch Shahni bids a heart-breaking farewell to her village during Partition; Krishna Baldev Vaid's 'Escape' is a telling story about women's yearning for freedom;Yashpal's Phoolo's Kurta' is a sharp commentary on child marriage and notions of female modesty; in Bhisham Sahni's 'A Feast for the Boss' and Usha Priyamvada's 'The Homecoming', ageing parents find themselves tragically out of sync with their family; Amarkant's 'City of Death' looks at the fragile thread that holds together communal peace; Phanishwarnath Renu's The Third Vow' features the lovable bullock-cart driver Hiraman; Bhagwaticharan Varma's 'Atonement' and Harishankar Parsai's 'The Soul of Bholaram' are scathing satires; and 'Tirich' by contemporary writer Uday Prakash is a surreal tale—these and other stories in the collection are compelling, evocative, and showcase an unforgettable range of brilliant styles, forms, and themes.
Poonam Saxena is a journalist, writer, and translator. She worked with the Hindustan Times for several years, first as editor of Brunch and then of the weekend section. She has translated Dharamvir Bharati's Gunahon ka Devta from Hindi to English (Chander & Sudha), Rahi Masoom Raza's Scene: 75, and co-authored filmmaker Karan Johar's memoir, An Unsuitable Boy. She lives in Delhi.
Bookshops have been my refuge for as long as I can remember. The comforting silence, broken only by the soft sound of pages being turned or of people talking in low voices, and the rows upon rows of books were a warm cocoon in which I was happy to lose myself. Leaving the bookshop was a disorienting experience as one adjusted to the noise, people, sunlight or, if it was evening, the gathering darkness. But the bundle of books that I hugged to myself promised many happy hours ahead. It was the same with libraries. As a schoolgirl, when I went to Mussoorie during my summer vacations, inordinately lengthy periods of time were spent borrowing books from its beautiful nineteenth-century public libraw, and sitting curled up in the hotel room reading them.
Finding bookshops was never a problem in Delhi, but finding bookshops that sold Hindi books was. For years I had a secret reading life no one knew about—I refer to my reading of Hindi novels and short stories. This love affair started when I was in college, and when I say it was a 'secret', I mean it was something I couldn't really share with my friends. Most of them were immersed in Camus, Shakespeare, Wodehouse. As was I, but I was also enamoured of Mannu Bhandari and Rajendra Yadav, Premchand and Usha Priyamvada. Perhaps it had to do with my family background—being from Uttar Pradesh, we spoke Hindi at home, there were Hindi books in the house, one of my aunts taught the subject in a college and wrote Hindi poetry. (A big reason I began translating from Hindi to English and why I remain a cheerleader of translation in general is because of this—it gives me an opportunity to share books I've read and enjoyed with people who can't read Hindi.)
I am not a scholar of Hindi literature (I studied History in St Stephen's College, and did an MPhil on women in the freedom movement in UP); I am a lover of Hindi fiction. So I would scour the city for Hindi bookstores, and eventually I found my havens: little (and sometimes not so little) shops tucked away in Connaught Place or Mandi House or Daryaganj. Some of them shut down, but new ones opened; annual book fairs were a godsend, as are online shopping platforms.
Years of buying books has meant overflowing bookshelves and tottering piles on the floor next to my bed. I've realized that it would take several lifetimes to read every short story and every novel that I want to.
And that is partly the story of this anthology. I wanted to include dozens of different authors, to put together not one but five volumes, and accommodate every short story I liked. But that was obviously impossible.
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