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This episode brings a story written by Mulk Raj Anand, a path-breaking writer. Born in Punjab in 1905, he broke many barriers, earning a doctorate in philosophy from Cambridge University in 1929. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group, which included many bright minds of the 20th century like E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, and Virginia Woolf. He was also a close friend of T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, and Picasso, and a founder member of the Progressive Writers Association.  Anand published thirteen novels and nine collections of short stories. He sharply focused on the lives of the working poor, helpless victims of the caste system, and impoverished and exploited folks, which made him a writer with a mission. After spending many years in England, Anand returned to India in 1947. Anand won many honors, including International Peace Prize, Padma Bhushan, and Sahitya Akademi Award. He died in 2004. The chosen story, The Liar, is about a hunter who his employer and other folks despise as a liar. But the lies he tells are a way of finding his own identity and discovering meaning in his life and are not meant to harm anyone.

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Munshi Premchand was a trailblazer storyteller who is remembered for his path-breaking contributions to both Urdu and Hindi languages. He was born in 1880 and was named Dhanpat Rai Srivastava. He started his writing career as an Urdu writer but later moved to Hindi at the advice of a friend. He is truly the father of Urdu afsana and Hindi kahani. In his creative journey, we find evidence of progress from a softer to a more mature persona, a sign of how he moved from describing familiar social situations to a penetrating mind that was comfortable managing more complex facets of reality. This task required courage and excellent mastery over the art of storytelling. Munshi Premchand is also remembered for his presidential address at the first meeting of the Progressive Writers’ Association in Lucknow in 1936. He died a few months later. In this episode, I read his short story Kafan or The Shroud, which is considered one of his masterworks.

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Welcome to IndiStories, a new Podcast about creative short fiction. My name is Surinder Deol. In this Podcast, I’m going to present the work of highly gifted South Asian fiction writers. In this first episode, I present a classic of Indian literature titled “Toba Tek Singh” written by Saadat Hasan Manto. It is a story about India's partition. It captures the human tragedy involving the exchange of lunatics between India and Pakistan, and its ending shatters our hearts. Saadat Hasan Manto was born in 1912. He was a prolific writer and produced 22 collections of short stories. He worked at All India Radio in New Delhi and as a screenwriter in the Bollywood film industry, where he wrote many movies, including the famous Sohrab Modi film on Mirza Ghalib. In 1948 he moved to Pakistan, where he was tried for producing obscene literature. He passed away in 1955.