In these times when hype overtakes substance and mediocrity rules the roost, it is not at all surprising that the Hindi literary world has treated with indifference an important development that took place on February 11, 2019 when the three-member jury chaired by Claudio Ott adjudged Hindi fiction writer and translator Sara Rai as the fifth winner of the prestigious Coburg Rückert Prize. Five Indian writers – Perumal Murugan, Uday Prakash, Jacinta Kerketta, Sara Rai and Geetanjali Shree- were short-listed and the prize went to Sara Rai as the jury members were of the opinion that her literary strengths lay in “close observation, empathy and precise, differentiated language”.
The man behind the award
Instituted in the memory of the great German Indologist, poet and translator Friedrich Rückert, who translated from Sanskrit the story of Nal-Damayanti as Nal und Damajanti and brought out six volumes titled Die Weisheit des Brahmanen (The Wisdom of the Brahmins), the Coburg Rückert Prize is awarded once in two years and is given away on Rückert’s birthday on May 16 in Coburg. Born in 1788 in Schweinfurt, Rückert died on January 31, 1866 in Coburg.
German academic Johanna Hahn, who wrote her M. A. thesis on Sara Rai’s works, translated twelve of her short stories from Hindi into German and compiled them into a volume titled “Im Labyrinth Erzählungen lungen” (In Labyrinth: Stories) published by Draupadi Verlag, Heidelberg. The Coburg Rückert prize was awarded to this book named after Rai’s short story “Bhoolbhulaiyan” (The Labyrinth).
Sara Rai made her name as a significant short story writer when the first collection of her short stories titled “Ababeel ki Udaan” (The Flight of a Swallow) was published in 1997 by Rajkamal Prakashan. Its cover carried a painting by one of the top Indian painters Ram Kumar and the first piece in the book was a long introductory essay by his younger brother and a big-ticket celebrity writer Nirmal Verma on her short stories. Ram Kumar, who was also a Hindi short story writer of no mean merit, was a close friend of Sara Rai’s father Sripat Rai who, besides editing the prestigious journal “Kahani”, was also a serious abstract painter. And, the short stories of this collection carried the Nirmal Verma’s tradition forward. However, there were marked differences between the two. While Verma’s short stories, especially of the comparable initial phase, were imbued with a bewitching romantic pathos, Rai’s short stories exuded a well-grounded, realistic pathos. In her use of an extremely sensitive and nuanced language that whispered hidden as well as open secrets of life into the reader’s ears, she palpably belonged to the Nirmal Verma school but her literary persona was as different from him as Bhimsen Joshi was from Abdul Karim Khan.
Illustrious lineage
Sara Rai is the self-effacing, determinedly low profile daughter of editor-publisher-painter Sripat Rai and the granddaughter of Dhanpat Rai Srivastava whom the world knows as Munshi Premchand. Her mother Zahra Rai hailed from an aristocratic Shia Muslim family of Banaras and had learnt Hindustani vocal music from no less an Ustad than Faiyaz Khan who would come to their mansion and stay for weeks together. She also wrote short stories and was a fairly good writer. A true representative of the composite culture of India, she imbibed refined literary and artistic tastes and sensibilities from her family – her uncle Amrit Rai, who had married Subhadra Kumari Chauhan’s daughter Sudha, was also a noted Hindi writer and translator – besides an enlightened view of life and firm secular values. Her writings do not shout slogans of social and political change, but her sympathy for the underdog is a running thread in all of them. Her short novel “Cheelwali Kothi”, published by Harper Collins, is the saga of an orphan girl’s tireless endeavour to make her life better.
As noted by Nirmal Verma, Sara Rai’s short stories do not have very many dialogues. The primary reason for this is that most of the events and dialogues take place in the inner, labyrinthine world of the characters. In fact, very sensitively etched descriptions come through as characters in their own right and take the narrative further, much in the same way as songs used to give a push to a Guru Dutt film in the desired direction. Her language is a fascinating amalgam of Hindi and Urdu words as she has a good command over both the languages.
In contrast to so many other writers in whose writings Urdu words stand out, they mingle with Hindi or Sanskrit words like milk and sugar in her works, creating a magically beautiful language that is clear and refreshing like the spring water.
“Biyaban Mein” (In Wilderness) and “Bhoolbhulaiyan aur Anya Kahaniyan” (Labyrinth and Other Stories) are two other collections of Sara Rai’s short stories, published by Rajkamal Prakashan and Surya Mandir Prakashan, Bikaner respectively, that require close reading. She is a writer who explores the inner world and articulates truths that are sometimes hidden in plain sight.
At present, she is perhaps the finest practitioner of E. M. Forster’s dictum “To Connect” as her creative insight reveals connections between things, situations and people that one would normally find difficult to connect. One hopes that the Hindi literary world will rejoice in her receiving a prestigious international award.
