Sahni - Middle India

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First published in India as Middle India: Selected Short Stories by Penguin Books India 2001
This edition published by Penguin Books India 2009

Copyright Bhisham Sahni 2001
This translation copyright Penguin Books India 2001

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-01-4306-646-0

This digital edition published in 2013.
e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-335-6

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this book.

To Martand with all my love

PENGUIN BOOKS
MIDDLE INDIA

BHISHAM SAHNI (19152003) was born in into a devout Arya Samaj family in Rawalpindi. He earned a masters degree in English literature from Government College, Lahore. Upon his return to Rawalpindi, he joined his fathers import business and also began teaching, staging plays, writing stories and becoming involved in the activities of the Indian National Congress. He later earned a PhD from Punjab University.

After Partition, he and his family settled in Delhi, where he was a lecturer at a Delhi University college and took to writing more earnestly. His first collection of short stories, Bhagya Rekha (Line of Fate), was published in 1953. In 1957 Sahni moved to Moscow, during which time he translated several Russian books into Hindi, notably some works of Leo Tolstoy. He returned to Delhi in 1963 to resume teaching. He edited the literary journal Nai Kahaniyan from 1965 to 1967.

Sahni was a recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award for his novel Tamas in 1976. He also received the Distinguished Writer Award of the Punjab government, the Lotus Award from the Afro-Asian Writers Association and the Sovietland Nehru Award. His writings include seven novels, nine collections of short stories, six plays and a biography of his late brother, the actor and writer Balraj Sahni. Many of his books have been translated into numerous foreign and most major Indian languages. In 1998 he was conferred an honorary doctorate by the Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad and the Padma Bhushan. In 1999 he received the Shlaka Award, the highest literary award from the Delhi government.

GILLIAN WRIGHT is a journalist and author living in New Delhi. She studied both Hindi and Urdu at London University and has translated two modern classics of Hindi literature, Shrilal Shuklas Raag Darbari and Rahi Masoon Rezas Adha Gaon (available as A village Divided from Penguin India). Her other books include An Introduction to the Hill Stations of India, Sri Lanka, and Birds of the Indian Subcontinent. She has collaborated with Mark Tully on all his books including NoFull Stops in India, Heart of India and India in Slow Motion.