The Times of India
Nirmal Verma: Noise in a silent cemetery
Avijit Ghosh
[ Wednesday, October 26, 2005 10:46:37 pmTIMES INTERNET NETWORK ] NEW DELHI: In his delicate, haunting prose, love often hurts like hell. In Nirmal Verma's short stories and novels, romantic ardour is often like an old, dimly-lit house on the hills; it flickers like a firefly but few can reach there. Love slowly turns out to be an unbearable burden, a sad crutch best abandoned. And life becomes a slow midnight train that passes everyone by.
Few writers in any language could construct a world that is part memory, part silence and then gently draw in the reader as admirably as Verma, 76, who passed away following a prolonged illness at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on Tuesday. His world of fiction is all about evening shadows looming over silent cemeteries, of white winter snow outside and freezing hearts inside, of self-exiled men and alienated women who don't believe in changing the world but opt to cocoon themselves in a private universe of their own.
"If I were to choose two important short story writers in Hindi in post-Independence India, it would be: Phanishwar Nath Renu and Nirmal Verma," says Sahitya Akademi winning poet Kedarnath Singh. Writer Rajendra Yadav, who also edits the literary magazine, Hans, affirms. "From every point of view — language, technique, treatment — Verma is very significant," he says.
Once his first collection of short stories, Parinde (Birds), was published in 1958, the Shimla-born author's place in the Hindi literary pantheon was assured. Verma became one of the pioneers of Nayi Kahani movement along with Mohan Rakesh, Rajendra Yadav and Kamleshwar. But many remember him now as constantly growing and evolving as a writer and thinker over the past five decades.
He could also take a political stand. Writer Mrinal Pande recalls how the novelist-essayist stood up to Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency when most progressive artistes preferred silence to dissent. "In reply to the young Gandhi's remark, "Indians need bread more than freedom," Verma asked, "Why can't we have both bread and freedom?" says Pande.
Earlier, when Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, the writer not only spoke out in protest but also quit the Communist party. "It was a rare act of courage. Those days it was almost suicidal for a writer to do something like that," says contemporary Hindi writer Uday Prakash. Consequently, Verma had no illusions about political ideology. As Pande puts it, "His literature, fiction as well as reportage, is a cry against the crushing of the human spirit and an appeal for civilised behaviour."
East Europe was an indelible part of his psyche and art. Verma, who did his masters in history from Delhi's St Stephen's College and chose to write in Hindi over English, spent much of the Sixties working in Czechoslovakia. And thanks to him, Hindi readers had an opportunity to read in translation Karel Capek and Milan Kundera before the non-Hindi readers in the country.
In his fiction, with the possible exception of Raat Ka Reporter, Verma largely eschewed the political. But his essays were always politically active, culturally alive. In recent times, he was accused of veering towards the Right. "But that is only because in India, we compartmentalise people into categories," says Uday Prakash. Pande offers a similar view: "He was against extremes: Left or Right. He just stood on the side of the creative mind."
What Verma has left behind is a solid body of work in every form of literature: short stories (Parinde), novel (Ve Din), travelogue (Cheeron pe Chandni), play (Teen Ekant) and essays (Bharat aur Europe). Works that got him the Jnanpith Award and the Sahitya Akademi Award. And one of his short stories, Maya Darpan, was made into an award-winning film by director Kumar Shahani. He is also the most translated Hindi author abroad. As Yadav puts it succinctly, "Without Nirmal Verma, the world of Hindi stories would have been incomplete."