Facebook post on Shiv Batalvi’s love affair triggers debate

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 8

A Facebook post about Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s alleged love affair with Anusuya Singh, writer-publisher Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari’s youngest daughter who passed away at Merida in Venezuela on Sunday, has triggered a debate. She was 84. 

A post made regarding alleged love affair between Anusuya and Shiv on Facebook page 'Kitab Trinjan' has opened several lesser-known pages from the poet’s life. Even during her last visit to India, Anusuya had visited Shiv Kumar’s family in Patiala.

The social media post claimed that she was poet’s first love. “Anusuya had a love affair with Shiv Kumar, as claimed by the poet, and that her father did not approve of it. Though it has always been denied by some members of her family as more of a myth created by the poet.”

Her family, however, stands divided over the narrative. Wife of Anusuya’s nephew, Poonam Singh who now is the editor of magazine ‘Preetlari’ denied that Gurbaksh Singh ever opposed the marriage between Shiv and Anusuya. “Anu had spoken to me at length about all things. The first point is that she (Anusuya) was asked by her father if she wished to marry Shiv, to which she said no. After that he told her that then she must go and study. Anu told me she could not see herself as a wife to him. She was not even twenty when her first husband committed suicide.”

Poonam added till the last day that she could physically, she made it a point to look at a star she said was for Shiv, and in her last visit to India she asked us to accompany her to meet Shiv’s family which was then in Patiala. 

“She gave me all other details too about the passion, about which I shall only say in her defence that she was a passionate person. As many men can be too. Why a woman has to be punished for eternity and more? No, Shiv did not create a myth, but should have been more sporting perhaps... definitely he was hurt and felt sad.”

Poonam wrote that Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari always stood by all his daughters. “Even the eldest confided something to myself... in an informal manner. He may not have wanted the eldest to get married to a Muslim and be parted from India... it may be true. But there were other things too. And Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari’s daughter Protima married a Hindu Bengali Communist and his daughter Urmila married Com Jagjit Singh Anand, also a love marriage and it was inter-caste.” 

Kitab Trinjan’s comment on Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari’s opposition to the affair, Sukirat Anand, nephew of Anusuya (her elder sister Urmila’s son), called that part tendentious at best, in fact “salacious in nature”.

“She did not have a “passionate” affair with Shiv, it was more a myth created by Shiv. And I say this with some authority as in 2003 I had a long chat with her about it. I have no reason to doubt her version as she was always a frank person with Western sensibilities,” he said.

Anand added that Anusuya’s first marriage was not arranged. She had a love marriage.

Shiv’s son Meherban Batalvi, who is based in Canada, also rejected the story. While talking to The Tribune over phone, he confirmed that Anusuya had visited the family a few years back. “But she also said theories of her affair with my father were all people’s wild imagination,” he said.    

Taught English in Venezuela

Most of her life, Anusuya taught English at Merida University in Venezuela. She was from the first batch of the Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University of Russia (PFU) in 1960. The PFU was established in 1960 to provide higher education to Third World students. In university, she fell in love with Raul Jesus Estevez Laprea, who was then studying physics. In 1965, they moved to Venezuela. Both taught at Merida University. 

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