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When we look at the landscape of modern Hindi fiction, there are a few names like Munshi Prem Chand that take the top spot, but there are a few others who made lasting contributions to the art of storytelling. One such name that comes to my mind is Agyeya. He was born in Kasia, a small town in Uttar Pradesh, in 1911 in a Punjabi Brahmin family and he adopted an unusual pen name, Agyeya, meaning the unknowable. Agyeya wrote poetry, published novels and short stories, plays, travelogues, and several works of literary criticism. As an academic and journalist, Agyeya was the voice of modernism and experimentalism in Hindi literature. He was awarded many honors including Sahitya Akademi Award in 1964, Jnanpith Award in 1979, and the Golden Wreath Award in 1983. He passed away in 1987. I present ROZ a short story written by Agyeya. Let us hear the story.

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In this episode, I present FALLS, a short story by Geeetha Nair G. It is about a romance that happened many years ago. Still, a chance encounter brought back memories of what looked real at one time, but underneath, it was a show rather than a commitment. We calculate how our future will play out, but the arc of life is unpredictable. All our plans and schemes can unravel as time marches forward. The story is drawn from the Punch Magazine Anthology of New Writing by the Woman Writers and is presented here with the permission of Shireen Quadri, Anthology’s editor. Geetha Nair G is a retired professor of English from Kerala. She has authored numerous short stories and poems and won the Rabindranath Tagore Poetry competition in 2019.

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If you love good Urdu prose, we have a real gift for you. A. Hameed was a Pakistani novelist and story writer who wrote fiction with a poetic flair. Using metaphors, mainly drawn from the beauty of nature, he weaved a net of words that enveloped the reader in its fold. He was born in Amritsar in 1928 and wrote about 200 novels and nearly 100 books for children. He was awarded the Pride of Performance Award by the government in 1997. He passed away in 2011. The story ‘Aur Pull Tuut Gaya’ selected for this Podcast is a romantic tale that breaks the reader’s heart with its slow-moving march towards the shattering of a romantic alliance.

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The story  “Kashmir Valley’s Soofiya Bano” was written by Humra Quraishi. Set against the backdrop of the devastating floods in the valley in 2014, we learn from the story about the painful search of a mother for her missing son. The son was arrested and then he fell into the black hole of the security apparatus. The story starts with the description of the flooded Srinagar home of academic Agha Ashraf Ali, father of Agha Shahid Ali, the well-known poet, and his wife from Awadh, with a nostalgic touch. This part is real and not fiction. One family’s tragic end, which is actual history, is then mingled with the fictional account of the destruction of another family, a family of an imagined mother and her son. The real is thus combined with the magical, or as the author calls it, we are all ‘flowing along with our destiny.’

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The story titled "Pinjara" was written by Upendranath Ashk, a famous novelist, story writer, and playwright. He was born in Jalandhar, in 1910. He worked for All India Radio for many years and invented what came to be known as naturalistic Hindi theater. Upenderanath Ashk had complete mastery over Hindi and Urdu and his books were published in both these languages. In 1940 he moved to Allahabad where he spent the rest of his life. He passed away in 1996.

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"Puure Chaand Ki Raat" is a story written by Krishan Chander, the eminent Urdu fiction writer, who weaved poetry into his prose writing. This love story is set in Kashmir and even if you have never visited this place you can smell the purified and fragrant air of the Valley in Krishan Chander’s writing. Love can take many forms, but if you have loved someone deeply your love for that person will never die. Krishan Chander’s description of nature is realistic as well as mysterious. He creates colorful images, one after the other, with the power of his pen.

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We start the second season with a fascinating story titled "Static A.D." written by Ameta Bal. The story is drawn from the "Anthology of New Writing by Women Writers" produced by the Punch literary magazine and edited by Shireen Quadri. This anthology is a beautiful collection. Get a copy of this book, and you can spend hours reading these fascinating tales. 

 "Static A.D." selected for this program is about what looks like the end of the world, or the world as we know it. There are riots, and people walk on the roads like ghosts searching for food and shelter. The writer uses short sentences with a poetic flair, and she takes us to an apocalyptic scenario that we all dread. Still, it is a place that is probably our journey's end as human species, given the damage we have done to the environment and continue to do.

  Ameta Bal is a postgraduate in Fashion and English Literature. She has worked with Indian Express, Hindustan Times, Marie Claire, and Elle. She is currently learning Korean and spends her time gaming, watching, and reading all things apocalyptic while trying vainly to shun social media.

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The Chessplayers as a piece of historical fiction is a class by itself. At the surface level, it is the story of two petty Nawabs who were obsessed with the game of chess, but at the deeper level, it is the story of the fall of Oudh, and even the fall of independent India. Once the British took hold of Oudh, very little could come in their way to grasp the remnants of the Mughal Empire in Delhi and the rest of India. For the city of Lucknow itself, it was the best of times and the worst of times. People were engaged in all kinds of artistic pursuits and in all kinds of pleasure-inducing activities while the foundation of the state was shaking and the British were eagerly waiting for an opportunity to steal the kingdom. Nawab Wajid Ali Shah had his faults, but he was a legendary ruler in many ways. A patron of arts, a poet and musician, a playwright, and an actor, but unfortunately, he had lost touch with the intricacies of statecraft. The game of chess became deadly that not only brought the friendship between the two players to an end, but at a higher level, it was the failure of a dream, a world, despite its shortcomings that had several positive aspects which survived the colonial takeover and are considered great gifts to the tradition of the Indian dance and music. 

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Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore is a writer who needs no introduction to the listeners. He not only rejuvenated Bengali literature, but there is not an Indian genre or subgenre of fiction, poetry, playwriting, philosophy, art, and education that he did not profoundly influence. He was born in Calcutta in 1861 in a distinguished family at the forefront of the Indian renaissance. While on a trip to England, he showed his translation of Gitanjali to poets William Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound, who helped him get the book published by Asia Society. That is how he won the Noble Prize in Literature in 1913; the first non-European to win this honor. He was also awarded a knighthood in 1915, which he renounced after the Jallianwala massacre of 1919. Tagore started writing short stories when he was sixteen. He was a gifted composer and composed more than 2000 songs. His songs are also national anthems of two countries – India and Bangladesh. Tagore traveled extensively and conversed with leading literary, political, and scientific personalities of his time, people like Einstein. He influenced literature and arts, not only in India but globally. The story “The Tale of a Muslim Woman” was composed by Tagore a few months before his death, but it was not published until 1955. 

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IndiStories presents a piece written by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, and the most loved Indian political leader. Because of his education at Harrow School, Trinity College, Cambridge, and the one who was trained in law at the Inner Temple, he acquired deep thinking skills that he used to probe India’s history and culture. Who doesn’t remember his Tryst With Destiny speech that he delivered as the clock struck midnight to usher India into an era of freedom? Nehru called himself an agnostic and a scientific humanist. IndiStories is a podcast for short fiction, while what we are presenting here may be called an essay or a page from a book on philosophy and culture. That may be true. But it is also true that the journey of Hinduism during the ages is also a story. It is not a piece of fiction, but a fascinating story nevertheless. It is a story that is highly relevant to the times we live in. The word Hinduism is being redefined and new meanings are being assigned to it. In this context,  it is important for us to know what Pandit Nehru with his critical scientific inquiring mind thought about Hinduism. This story is excerpted from Nehru’s book The Discovery of India which he wrote in Ahmadnagar Fort Prison for a period of five months, April through September 1944.