Roundabout | A look back at Those Days of Nirmal Verma

Here and Hereafter, a literary biography of the iconic Hindi writer Nirmal Verma by Vineet Gill brings back a collage of collective memories of this writer’s wide and varied readership

It was in the house of economist Manmohan Singh, who would become Prime Minister many years later, in Chandigarh’s Sector 11 that I had my first and perhaps the only one-to-one encounter, with Nirmal Verma (1929-2005).

Those were my fledgling years as a newspaper scribe and the only two books I had read of the writer were his ‘Ve Din’ (Those Days) and ‘Laal Tin Ki Chat’ (Laal Tin ki Chhat ) and sadly in English translation. (HT Photo)

Those were my fledgling years as a newspaper scribe and the only two books I had read of the writer were his ‘Ve Din’ (Those Days) and ‘Laal Tin Ki Chat’ (Laal Tin ki Chhat ) and sadly in English translation. The latter was translated by Kuldip Singh and the former by his contemporary writer and friend Krishna Baldev Vaid.

In fact, the interview had been facilitated by Vaid who was then a tenant in the house. Nirmal was visiting and I met him in the study and found him one of the most gentle and kind souls ever. However, struck by awe, I could manage only a few questions, and a small interview was carried in the newspaper with his picture and the piece lost to time was my only claim to having written on Verma.

But Verma was all around us thanks to his avid readers, plays were staged on his stories and heated discussions would take place, especially in the Left circles, which still had a dominant self-righteous literary voice in those days. Nirmal, too, was on the left side of the road when he started his literary journey. A pioneer of the Nai Kahani movement, he was a student at St Stephen’s College in Delhi University and was a member of The Communist Party of India, which he quit in 1956 after the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

Here and hereafter

Vineet Gill, who has skillfully explored the oeuvre and writing of Verma in a one-of-its kind literary biography, places his Prague experience where he went from the university as a translator as significant in shaping his writings. However, he points out: “Back in India, Verma’s detractors often dismissed him by calling attention to the dominant European strain in his writings and thought, and the extensive references to Western literature in his essays and stories. For them, Verma was not sufficiently Indian.”

Gill adds, “It may be partly in response to this line of criticism that Verma dedicated much of his later career to reasserting his Indian roots, and consciously began fashioning himself as an ‘Indian intellectual’, laying claim to his country’s historical and (more significantly) mythological legacy.” There was much brouhaha on an essay on the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad and the beauty of his prose left even the Leftists confused. It is interesting to read about the perplexed response to perfection of prose on one hand and politics on the other. Our ever-pledged dear poet Mangalesh Dabral points out to the biographer: “This is why it is so difficult to disagree with him. You fall under the spell of this prose!”

The point that gets mixed in this debate about Verma’s writing is that he was no ‘plotter’ in his writing and if he had in any way not been sincere to his soul his words would not have counted as much. I recall in the mid-80s, a young reader who was then studying law, walking with me through Connaught Place, playing out scenes from his novel ‘Ek Chithrha Sukh’: this is what Bitti did here and this is what she did there. One congratulates the literary autobiographer to get us talking about Nirmal again.

His reader understood him and it was the literary power wielders and critics who were at odds with him often for not being able to slot him in one wave or the other or for that matter one ‘ism’ or the other. Of course, the awards from literary organisations took their sweet time to come to him. The Jnanpith award was reluctantly given to him in 1999 and that too just half of it! To all raised eyebrows this was one award that was shared by him and Punjabi novelist Gurdial Singh being unfair in a way to both of them. Yes, he had earlier been given the Jananpith Trust’s Murti Devi Award for his book of essays ‘Pratishruti ke Kshetra’ However, he remained in his life and still is the most quoted of Hindi Indian writers.

The last word

Poet Gagan Gill, an old friend, shared some telling memories of her husband Nirmal, who would be flooded by mail from readers. “The letters would come from far-off small towns and villages. Enclosed in some of the envelopes would be either a peacock or a pigeon feather. One could guess the delicacy of the moment of this enclosure. Nirmal had touched so lightly the hearts of his readers”.

His readers included not just university professors but rag-a-tag sellers, railway policemen, waiters, theatre workers, railway policemen and waiters of the United Coffee House. One reader even came and confessed that he would go to Shri Ram Centre Book Stall in an open-neck shirt to slip in a book of Verma’s without paying for it!

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