3 In Intimate Relations: Exploring Indian Sexuality, Delhi: Viking, 1989, p. 14.
4 Daar Se Bichhudi (Delhi: Rajkamal), p. 123 . All translations from this novel are mine.
5 Tohellwith you Mitro (trans.) Smita Bharti and Meenakshi Bharadwaj (Delhi: Katha), p. 20.
6 Daar Se Bichhudi (Delhi: Rajkamal, 2001), pp. viii–x.
7 Ibid, p. 54.
8 Ibid p. xii and p. xiii respectively.
9 Ibid, p. 16–17. Emphasis mine.
Acknowledgements
Translating Krishna Sobti’s work is generally considered to be next to impossible; she works with so many speech registers – intimate, poetic-philosophic, political-public. I would not have ventured this attempt without her encouragement, warmth and engagement, and without the many conversations I had with her over the years. Shivanath-ji was almost always present at these meetings, and his generous support clarified many details. He gave me a copy of his beautifully illustrated memoir, which meticulously documents not only his own life and times, but also the history of the Indian Postal Service, from the late 1940s to the present. I would not have chanced upon them otherwise.
I will always remember Krishna-ji’s gesture when asked about a word in a particularly moving passage of the novel; it turned out to be a misprint, one letter having dropped out in the Hindi transcription of ‘van Gogh’. She told me what it was but also sent me some van Gogh reproductions, to bring home to me a sense of the reds and yellows referred to in that particular passage. It made me laugh, even as it brought a lump to my throat.
I am extremely grateful to all those who helped me in the process of translation and I record their names, not only to thank them, but also to absolve them of any responsibility for what has finally emerged after so many months of toil:
Rashmi Sadana, for reading the first draft to smooth it out enough for further work;
Himani Dalmia, for going through the later draft to weed out the many awkward phrases that refused to go away;
Minakshi Thakur, for her intense engagement with the project, and for her invaluable help in polishing the final version;
and Ashok Maheshwari of Rajkamal Prakashan, for helping to resolve various logistic issues.
About the Book
Aranya and Ishan are neighbours. They are in the autumn of their lives. She is impulsive, anarchic and fiercely feminist. He is gentle, sensitive, orderly and believes in the institution of family, even though he has no one to call his own. Aranya thinks about the many Delhis, from the older one glimmering on the other side of the river to the trans-Yamuna residential complex where she lives now. Ishan is deeply spiritual and draws strength from his Danish guide in the Himalayas. The two of them banter about time, existentialism, changing landscapes, food, music and human nature. They think aloud about ageing and death, and wonder if living the way they do amounts to biding time.
Krishna Sobti’s Samay Sargam is a novel about sharing solitudes and growing old in a city that is at once keenly private and aggressively collective. This is as much a portrait of the changing times as it is the story of a beautiful romance that thrives on companionship.
About the Author
KRISHNA SOBTI is considered the grand dame of Hindi literature. Born in 1925 in Gujarat (now in west Pakistan), she received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980 for her novel Zindaginama, and in 1996 was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the highest honour given by the Akademi. Her 1966 novel Mitro Marajani, an unapologetic portrayal of a married woman’s sexuality, took the world of Hindi literature by storm. She is also the recipient of the first Katha Chudamani Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement (1999), apart from the Shiromani Award in 1981, the Hindi Academy Award in 1982, the Shalaka Award of the Hindi Academy Delhi and the Hutch-Crossword award for the English edition of Dil-o-Danish in 2005. She received the Jnanpith Award in 2017.
VASUDHA DALMIA is Professor Emerita of Hindi and Modern South Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where she also held the Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professorship in South and Southeast Asian Studies. She retired in 2014 as Yale University’s first professor in Hindu Studies. Her monograph, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu
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First published in English in India in 2013 by Harper Perennial
An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India
www.harpercollins.co.in
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3
This edition published in India in 2019 by Harper Perennial
Copyright © Krishna Sobti 2013, 2019
English translation Copyright © Vasudha Dalmia 2013, 2019
First published in Hindi in 2000 as Samay Sargam by Rajkamal Prakashan
P-ISBN: 978-93-5302-492-5
Epub Edition © January 2019 ISBN: 978-93-5302-661-5
This is a wo
rk of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Krishna Sobti asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Cover calligraphy: Nikheel Aphale
Cover design: Studio Em & En
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