28 yrs later, Pash’s 16 new poems found

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 20

Twenty-eight years after his death, 16 new poems written by rebel Punjabi poet Pash have been found.

A recent book comprising all his works has claimed that these verses are coming into public domain for the first time.

Ludhiana-based Left-leaning Dastak Publishers has come out with a new book titled “Sabh ton Khatarnaak…” and has claimed that these poems — collected from various sources — are being published for the first time. Out of these, 10 are in Punjabi.

The book also comprises four Hindi ghazals, a form of poetry that Pash rarely opted for. Besides that, the book also has two Hindi poems. All six Hindi poems have been penned in the Gurmukhi script.

These were found in a pile of notes and diaries of Pash that were lying with his father Major Sohan Singh Sandhu, who passed away in July 2013 in California.

Before his death in 2011, he handed over all the available material with him to Birmingham-based blogger Bharat Bhushan, who has been running a popular blog on the poet for the past five years.

“During our meeting in Holland in 2011, Pash’s father handed me a few handwritten papers of Pash and two school notebooks. I found these poems in those books and papers and passed them on to Kulwinder,” said Bhushan, who is in Punjab these days.

Kulwinder, the editor of the book, researched on it with others for close to a year. He said that these 16 poems have neither been printed nor were available in any of the four anthologies of his poems or in any contemporary journals.

The book also comprises some poems which were never published in Punjab, but were published in different magazines outside Punjab. These also include a poem titled ‘Nari Niketan’. “It is a wonderful poem and I am surprised how it went unnoticed earlier,” said Kulwinder.

Pash’s close friend and lyricist Shamsher Sandhu said that still a lot of stuff written by Pash is yet to come into public domain.

“From the writing style, I can say that these poems were written by him. These poems will help the critics understand his creative process,” said Sandhu, who published a couple of unpublished poems and prose pieces by Pash in his book around four years back.

He said that there was a large collection of letters written by Pash to fellow poet Amitoj.