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Khehde Sukh Vehde Sukh
The characters, Jagat Singh, Chinto and Bhago shoulder most of the plot, while the secondary characters - good, bad and ugly, viz Basta Singh, Jai Kaur, Bishna, Kutba Fakir, Khazana, Daya Kaur, Inder Singh etc. have their own tales to tell and are symbolic of the colourful eclectic mix that defines rural Punjab. However, what emerges as the Achilles’ heel are the threadlike storylines running parallel to those of the main characters’ stories. These sometimes trip over each other, depleting the plot’s momentum and creating gaps in the main storyline. Also, a couple of new characters sometimes pop up as in a popcorn machines, making it difficult to keep up with them. Certain stereotypes, especially the Freudian explanation of sexual repression or suppression as the root cause of some female characters’ illness of being possessed has been worn thin too. Yet there is a lot of truth in the way the characters live up to their surnames, the nonchalance (or fortified patience) of the villagers in view of the plague, the money-lender’s opaque dealings, the fate of wives purchased and the depiction of the farmer’s lot. The novel definitely paints a vivid picture of rural Punjab and lives up to its name. Abu Adib when offered the finest foreign wines by Rasool Hamzatov (author of Mera Daghistan) favours the local Vodka over all of them, explaining – "If you don’t mind, take away these bottles. You could offer these to people who have forgotten the taste of their mother’s cooking. As for me I don’t know these wines and they don’t know me either. How, then, are we going to talk? Now go get some good old Vodka for me. I shall wait for you to return." Wish more of this good home-brewed stuff is made and consumed so that people world over realise that Punjabi doesn’t translate merely into pop – the bhangra pop and the popping off of the cork of a bottle of whisky. |
THE novel under review is a specimen of the forgotten
Punjabi novel. Further speculation and research reveals definite traces
of a unified form, a concentric plot and a set of unique, well-defined
characters. Deliberate simplicity has been sustained over the
three-quarters-of-a-century slice of time that the novelist delineates
can be compared to the writings of Pearl S. Buck and Nanak Singh. The
novelist’s love for indigenous rural landscape and dialect can compete
with Hardy or Sholokov, while the wonderful melee of characters reminds
one of Rushdie or Rahi Masoom Raza (remember the intimitable characters
of Aadha Gaon?.