Among the new crop of Urdu short story writers that came up in the mid-1930s, Krishan Chandar (1914-1977) enjoyed the sort of fame that no other writer had known since Premchand. What's more, few Urdu writers could match his prolific output – 20 novels, 30 collections of short stories, and countless radio plays.
The Romantic Realist
Together with Ismat Chughtai, Saadat Hasan Manto and Rajinder Singh Bedi, Krishan Chandar is regarded as one of the four pillars of the modern Urdu short story. He arrived on the scene with an altogether different temperament – different, that is, from the Premchand school of realism. His first collection of short stories, Tilism-e-Khayal (The Magic of Thinking), gives ample proof of a romantic temperament, a romanticism that no amount of association in the company of the more ideologically-driven writers in the powerful literary grouping known as the Progressive Writers' Movement (PWM) could ever truly stamp out. It remained, in many ways, the bedrock of nearly all his writings.
However, as the noted Urdu critic Khalilur Rehman Azmi pointed out:
Krishan Chandar’s romanticism does not flee from life, nor does it preach a yearning for death or an escape into a world of the imagination. On the contrary, his romanticism is another name for a passionate restlessness to change life. Krishan Chandar experienced the harsh realities of society in the midst of picturesque locales, lush fields and gurgling waterfalls. And that is why his stories have a nostalgic twinge and a sweet sadness, especially in the early stories such as Jhelum Mein Nao Par (On a Boat on the Jhelum) or Aangan (Courtyard).lilur Rehman Azmi, Literary Critic
In his second collection of short stories, Nazarey (Scenes), Krishan Chandar appears to move towards realism. His attempt to understand reality appears to gain strength and he seems to capture the essence of issues that lie at the crux of life, without diluting the intensity of his feelings. Be Rang-o-Boo (Insipid), Jannat aur Jahhannum (Heaven and Hell), Khooni Naach (Bloody Dance), Dil ka Chiragh (The Lamp of the Heart) are some of the finest stories of this early period.
From the point of view of literary aestheticism, Do Furlang Lambi Sadak (The Two Furlong Long Road), is one of the most memorable Urdu short stories. Like the stream of consciousness technique that was gaining popularity among Indian writers who were exposed to English writings, the story is free from the constraints of plot but the chain of thought connects to produce an intricately-woven sequence of emotions and experiences that lead us to understand certain fundamental truths.
The stories in Nazarey portray how social realism began to take hold of Chandar’s writing; but due to an intrinsically romantic temperament, he retained a deeply colourful, almost rhetorical tone even when he was writing socially-engaged, deeply-purposive literature.
He Could Only Have Been a Writer...
Born in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, where his father Dr Gauri Shankar worked as a doctor, Krishan Chandar enjoyed a certain cosmopolitan ease and bilingualism that few Urdu writers of his generation had enjoyed. After having spent the formative years of his childhood in Pooch, where his father served as physician to the Maharaja of Poonch, he moved to study at the Forman Christian College in Lahore to pursue a Masters in English followed by a degree in Law. As his wife, Salma Siddiqui says in an interview, Krishan Chandar's mother was keen that her son study law. Chandar on the other hand, was inclined towards writing – especially since the very first story he wrote, while still a student, was accepted for publication quite easily.
What is more, the combination of acute poverty, sharp social inequalities and human exploitation that he had seen as a child in Kashmir had had a lasting impact on his psyche. Given his temperament, he could only have been a writer.
Bombay Dreams
After a stint of writing radio plays for the All India Radio, first in Lahore then in Delhi and finally Lucknow, during the mid-1940s – where his colleagues were fellow writers Saadat Hasan Manto and Upendranath Ashk – Chandar moved first to Poona and then to work for films. His friends from his days in Lahore, Chetan Anand, Dev Anand, Balraj Sahni, were already here.
Bombay had emerged the beating heart of the progressive movement; in fact a group of writers and artists, known as the ‘Bombay Progressives’ were busy crafting a new canon. Krishan Chandar took to this Bombay like a duck to water.
In Poona, he wrote and produced two films, Man ki Jeet (The Victory of the Heart) and Sarai ke Baahar (Outside the Inn), and continued to take up writing assignments for films as and when such projects came his way.
While not as successful as a film writer as his contemporaries, he was a quintessential writer. Writing as a craft, as an everyday exercise, as a means of earning a livelihood remained a life-long preoccupation. In fact, Krishan Chandar had penned the opening two lines of a story when he suffered a massive heart attack while sitting on his writing table.
A Breath of Fresh Air in Urdu Literature
Influenced by the likes of Jonathan Swift, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and DH Lawrence, he wrote stories and short humorous pieces in both English and Urdu. This bilingualism and exposure to the best of western literature allowed him to make many introductions to the modern Urdu short story. He incorporated the technique of western story-telling with such expertise that it appears to be his own.
Added to his craft as a storyteller was a freshness and simplicity that was entirely new for the Urdu reader. Toote Hue Tare (Broken Stars), Husn aur Haiwan (Beauty and the Beast), Purab Des hai Dilli (Delhi is an Eastern Land), Shola-e-Bedard (Unfeeling Spark) and three long stories of this period, namely Zindagi ke Morh Par (On a Turn in Life), Garjan ki ek Sham (On a Night of Thunder) and Balcony’are some of his most successful stories. According to Ihtesham Husain, the Marxist critic:
Among the new short story writers, no one has squeezed so much out of the descriptions of scenery and locales as Krishan Chandar has; nor has anyone tried to place nature in the context of human relations as he has. Kashmir, Gulmarg and Jhelum are not mere characters in a story; if anything Balcony, Nukkad (Corner) and Wadi (Valley) have a reality of their own.Ihtesham Husain
Another characteristic quality of Krishan Chandar’s writing is the tinge of sarcasm, or a rather rhetorical questioning – a quality typical of native speakers of Urdu who will state a thing in a manner when they actually wish to reinforce the exact opposite. Gradually, this sarcasm deepened and in the later stories, which can be regarded as his true masterpieces, the irony served to deepen the hues of realism. This gradually became a literary tool that served the larger progressive cause. Stories such as Annadata (The Giver of Food), Bhagat Ram, Mobi, Kaalu Bhangi and Brahmaputra are possibly his finest stories. All of them display all that is the best and brightest in Krishan Chandar’s craft as a story-teller – especially Annadata, which is one of the most biting critiques of the Great Bengal Famine. Annadata’s astringent irony and unsparing honesty making it one of the most memorable stories in Urdu.
(Rakhshanda Jalil is a writer, translator and literary historian. She has written Liking Progress, Loving Change: A Literary History of the Progressive Writers' Movement in Urdu (OUP, 2014). She has recently translated Krishan Chandar's seminal partition novel Traitor (Ghaddar) for Westland Amazon.)
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