Alvida, your writings will inspire always

Chaman Lal

ON July 11, at 9.15 pm, Hindi novelist Tejinder Gagan, living in Raipur after retirment as Deputy Director-General, Doordarshan, suffered a cardiac arrest. He was 67. By 11 pm, social media was abuzz with the shocking news. I checked on his Facebook page to confirm it. It was true. 

Tejinder, part of the Progressive Writers Association, was a friend for over two decades. In fact, I became his admirer after reading his 1990 novel, Veh Mera Chehra, based on the condition of  Sikhs during the 1984 riots outside Punjab and Delhi. The depiction, based on Sikhs of Madhya Pradesh where Tejinder was working, was sensitive. “Without any rancour but a progressive humanist perspective,” I wrote on the novel in the Sahitya Akademi’s Hindi quarterly,  Samkallen Bhartiya Sahitya. 

During Gurbachan Singh Bhullar’s term as Editor of Punjabi Tribune, I recommended the publication of the Punjabi translation of the novel, which he accepted and serialised in the Sunday magazine of the daily. Later, Parminderjeet, Editor, Akhar Punjabi monthly, published it in a book form, which got translated into English as well. 

The novel is a story of a Sikh family that migrates to Madhya Pradesh from Punjab for work and is thinking of returning at the turn of events in 1984, but Shaminder, the main character, finds humanity in the common people there, and good and bad people among both Sikhs and non-Sikhs. He decides to stay back, where he was brought up in an adivasi town Kanker, now in Chhattisgarh; and integrate with the local people. This novel won him Vagishwari and MP Government awards.

I developed a close relationship with Tejinder and met him a few times in Dehradun, where he was with Doordarshan. He gifted me two of his novels, Kala Azar and Kala Padri. I collected most of his other publications  — from the 1981 novel, Mijajilal, to Seedhiyon Par Cheetah, 2010. I have 10 collections of his 38-year creative period, mostly novels, and a memoir of Odisha Adivasi Sambalpur area, Diary Saga Saga. Its preface was written by radical socialist Kishan Patnaik. I reviewed Kala Padri, which impressed me with its realistic depiction of Chhattisgarh adivasis. I wrote about it in a Hindi journal, which is part of my forthcoming book on Indian novel. This novel was unique in depicting the life of Chhattisgarh’s poorest adivasis with a profound human touch. A fellow Hindi fiction writer, Udai Prakash, described it as an ‘unprecedented Hindi novel in post-modern description of reality’.

 Post retirement, Tejinder settled in Raipur, where one of his sisters is teaching in a college, and brought out an English journal, Untold: Voice of the Downtrodden, for which he corresponded with me and spoke passionately. I contributed for the journal an article on the Ghadar Party, as desired by him in 2013. 

He is survived by his wife Daljit Gagan and daughter. It was too early to leave, Tejinder, when you were trying to humanise society with  your writings in the tough times of dehumanisation. Alvida dear friend, your writings shall keep enlightening society.