Book Review: Parallel Lives, Shared Legacy Of Hindi's Trailblazer Writers

Read together, Poonam Saxena’s masterful translations of the memoirs of Hindi sahitya or literature’s first ‘power couple’, Mannu Bhandari and Rajendra Yadav, present a composite picture of their marriage and of a young nation—they were the first generation to come of age in a newly independent India. Yadav (along with Mohan Rakesh and Kamleshwar), was a pioneer of the Nayi Kahani movement, and in later years, the editor of Hans magazine; first published by Premchand in 1930. The hallmark of the Nayi Kahani short story was the push and pull of modernity, the aspirations and concerns of the educated middle class in postcolonial India.

I first read Bhandari’s memoir, Ek Kahani Yeh Bhi (This Too is a Story), which, like much of her writing, is characteristically unfussy, stark and straightforward, full of her recollections of a childhood in Ajmer (the inspiration for several of her stories), her engagement with politics and activism, teaching life, marriage, motherhood and above all, her writing—the source and sustenance of her creative existence. Her debut short story, Main Haar Gayi, was published when she was around 24, eliciting a thrill that no subsequent literary accomplishment—not even the silver jubilee celebrations of Rajnigandha, the popular film based on another one of her short stories, nor the publication and successful stage adaptations of her novels—would match.

When she met Yadav in Calcutta it was in the afterglow of his novel, Ukhde Hue Log (The Uprooted). They undoubtedly connected over books and literature and their growing friendship turned to marriage in 1959, followed by a move to Delhi which they both felt was a better environment for Hindi writers at the time. However, early on, Yadav had dispelled her dreams of having found a true partner to share life’s vicissitudes with, making it clear at the outset that although now married, the pair would maintain ‘parallel lives’. It isn’t until you reach the Afterword, written after the publication of Yadav’s memoir, Mud Mud Ke Dekhta Hoon (Echoes of My Past), that the reader realises the euphemisms Bhandari employed to describe her deep sense of betrayal and heartbreak at Yadav’s regular and arbitrary decisions were a mask for his transgressions of fidelity.

Mud Mud Ke Dekhta Hoon, unlike Bhandari’s autobiography, is non-linear and a collection of thoughts, incidents, essays and reflections. Yadav, the ‘bad boy’ of Hindi literature (‘sahitya ka don’, ‘apne yug ka khalnayak’ were among the not inaccurate monikers applied to him in his time) was born in Agra in 1929, the eldest of ten siblings. A childhood accident permanently damaged his leg and left him bedridden for over a year. This injury had a deep impact on his psyche; he became a voracious reader—he may have been confined to a room on the ground-floor of the family’s mansion, but his imagination soared. This refusal to adhere or urge to nonconform, whether or not it originated in that cruel blow in early life, remained his guiding principle. “Mera poora jeevan hi niyamon aur bandhano se mukti ka sangharsh hai. Niyam todna hi mera niyam hai,” he declared. (My whole life has been a battle to be free of rules and restrictions. Breaking rules is my only rule.)

His insistence on remaining unfettered by any familial responsibility, as a fundamental right of the creative mind, is the wound Bhandari endures for 35 long years. “Where Rajendra’s misdemeanours would break me, my writing and the resultant fame would revive and heal me,” she writes. Writing was never her “first priority” (that luxury was reserved for Yadav); she had to manage her daughter and her home as well as her job, so that “whatever [she] wrote was not at their cost, but in the middle of fulfilling these responsibilities.”

Even as she rues her “abysmally poor resolve” to end their unhappy marriage, she acknowledges the indelible part Yadav played in encouraging her writing, including crediting him for coming up with the titles of several of her most memorable stories.

If Bhandari’s memoir is punctuated by self-effacement (for every literary triumph, even decades into being an established Hindi writer, feels like a ‘fluke’ to her) then Yadav’s is streaked with self-scrutiny; perhaps no one is harsher on him than he himself. In later years in particular, there is remorse and a recognition of having done badly by her.

It’s inevitable to read the two books partly as critical reviews of a marriage written by two writers of great repute, two open windows facing each other in the room of patriarchy. But the books are much more than retrospectives; they are invaluable supplements to the legacy of two trailblazing contemporary Hindi writers, a record of their successes and struggles. Ultimately, they both yearned for the same, ever-present human thing: acceptance, “on the whetstone of [which] self-confidence gets its sharp edge.”

Simar Puneet is the former Editorial Director of Aleph Book Company. She lives in Goa.

This article is part of Outlook's March 11 issue Femme Fatale which looks at how popular media has shaped narratives of violence against women over the years and rewrites the language of male gaze in media which commodifies and condemns the women who make headlines.