Maya has only three days left to live. She has important decisions at hand: dividing her sarees and her coveted jewelery among daughters and daughter-in-law, cleaning the house, placing order for her coffin, ensuring she is looking good at the time of her death and the like. As she goes about in a mechanical way preparing for her death she learns to live again.
Maya is the central character in British writer Divya Mathur’s story Antim Teen Din (Last Three Days). While the story breathes of Indian culture, the character is European in its bearing.
Nostalgia and loss no longer define the experience of the green card holder. The Indian diaspora has stepped into a far more complex jumble of existence. This was also the dominant opinion at the recently concluded three-day seminar in Toronto, organised to bring together the Hindi diasporic writers of Canada and Britain.
Organised by Katha UK and Hindi Writers’ Guild, the Toronto event discussed approaches to story writing and the modern idiom. Speaking at the event, noted writer and general secretary of Katha U.K. Tejinder Sharma, stressed on the need for the writers of the diaspora to emerge from the morass of nostalgia and assimilate the local concerns.
In an email interview, Sharma explained that the workshop discussed aspects of writing in view of the writer of a changing social setup. "Today’s writer does not just reveal what happened after. He justifies whatever happened, why did it happen? He works hard to show the story rather than narrate it," Sharma says.Till the turn of the century no writer of Indian origin had any Hindi work of fiction published in UK. Over the decade the growth has been tremendous with the Hindi diasporic writings boasting of writers like Tejinder Sharma (UK), Deepti Achla Kumar (Canada), Archana Pennuily (Denmark), and Krishna Bihari (UAE).
But it is a tough road for the writers of this literature. While most of the writers and readers are first-generation immigrants, the second and third generation immigrants merely have a working knowledge of the language. So the writer looks towards the reader and critics back home in India and the Indian diaspora abroad for readership.
"Procuring Hindi books abroad is not easy. Mostly the writer gives free copies to his friends and readers. There are hardly any outlets for Hindi Books. In London we have one store run by India’s Star Books," says Sharma. The first edition of most of the Hindi books is only 350 copies. These books are dumped in the government purchases or the writers are forced to buy their own books.
In UK, the Indian high commission started a scheme about four years ago to provide assistance to the upcoming Hindi writers in UK. Organisations like Geetanjali Bahubhashi Samaj, Asian Community Arts and Katha UK sponsor collections of poetry and short stories from time to time.
"Otherwise, the exploitation of the author by the publisher is complete and absolute.
Barring a few established names, every writer has to pay money to the publisher for getting his/her book published. Royalty is a distant dream for immigrant writers," Sharma adds.
Aren’t the writers put off by the bleak situation? Isn’t the lure to move into English too hard to resist? Sharma doesn’t think so. Some of the stories of Usha Priyamvada, Susham Bedi, Shail Agrawal, Ila Prasad, Archana Pennuily, Krishna Bihari, Divya Mathur, Gautam Sachdev, Usha Verma, Zakia Zubairi can compete with the best written in India. Tejinder Sharma’s story Qabra ka Munafa has been cited among the 20 best short stories in Hindi in the past 25 years.
With over 80 per cent of Indians who cannot speak English and the continuous stream of immigrants, Hindi diasporic literature is only beginning to find it voice. Sample The Colour of my Passport by Tejinder Sharma:
Maya is the central character in British writer Divya Mathur’s story Antim Teen Din (Last Three Days). While the story breathes of Indian culture, the character is European in its bearing.
Nostalgia and loss no longer define the experience of the green card holder. The Indian diaspora has stepped into a far more complex jumble of existence. This was also the dominant opinion at the recently concluded three-day seminar in Toronto, organised to bring together the Hindi diasporic writers of Canada and Britain.
Organised by Katha UK and Hindi Writers’ Guild, the Toronto event discussed approaches to story writing and the modern idiom. Speaking at the event, noted writer and general secretary of Katha U.K. Tejinder Sharma, stressed on the need for the writers of the diaspora to emerge from the morass of nostalgia and assimilate the local concerns.
In an email interview, Sharma explained that the workshop discussed aspects of writing in view of the writer of a changing social setup. "Today’s writer does not just reveal what happened after. He justifies whatever happened, why did it happen? He works hard to show the story rather than narrate it," Sharma says.Till the turn of the century no writer of Indian origin had any Hindi work of fiction published in UK. Over the decade the growth has been tremendous with the Hindi diasporic writings boasting of writers like Tejinder Sharma (UK), Deepti Achla Kumar (Canada), Archana Pennuily (Denmark), and Krishna Bihari (UAE).
But it is a tough road for the writers of this literature. While most of the writers and readers are first-generation immigrants, the second and third generation immigrants merely have a working knowledge of the language. So the writer looks towards the reader and critics back home in India and the Indian diaspora abroad for readership.
"Procuring Hindi books abroad is not easy. Mostly the writer gives free copies to his friends and readers. There are hardly any outlets for Hindi Books. In London we have one store run by India’s Star Books," says Sharma. The first edition of most of the Hindi books is only 350 copies. These books are dumped in the government purchases or the writers are forced to buy their own books.
In UK, the Indian high commission started a scheme about four years ago to provide assistance to the upcoming Hindi writers in UK. Organisations like Geetanjali Bahubhashi Samaj, Asian Community Arts and Katha UK sponsor collections of poetry and short stories from time to time.
"Otherwise, the exploitation of the author by the publisher is complete and absolute.
Barring a few established names, every writer has to pay money to the publisher for getting his/her book published. Royalty is a distant dream for immigrant writers," Sharma adds.
Aren’t the writers put off by the bleak situation? Isn’t the lure to move into English too hard to resist? Sharma doesn’t think so. Some of the stories of Usha Priyamvada, Susham Bedi, Shail Agrawal, Ila Prasad, Archana Pennuily, Krishna Bihari, Divya Mathur, Gautam Sachdev, Usha Verma, Zakia Zubairi can compete with the best written in India. Tejinder Sharma’s story Qabra ka Munafa has been cited among the 20 best short stories in Hindi in the past 25 years.
With over 80 per cent of Indians who cannot speak English and the continuous stream of immigrants, Hindi diasporic literature is only beginning to find it voice. Sample The Colour of my Passport by Tejinder Sharma:
Meri chamdi ka rang aaj bhi wahi hai
Mere seene mein wahi dil dhadakta hai
Jann gan man ki awaz, aaj bhi
Kar deti hai muje sawdhan!
Aur mein, aram se, ek bar phir
Bith jata hun, sochna jaise tal jata hai
Ki passport ka rang kaise badal jata hai
(My skin has the same colour
The same heart still beats in my body
The sound of the National Anthem
Still alerts me to attention
And I pause for a while
At ease, and I postpone the quest to find an answer
Why does passport change colour?)
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