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Delightful Essays
Mera Pind by
Giani Gurdit Singh is a collection of delightful
essays on various aspects of village life in the
Eastern Punjab. The book gives us a lively picture
of pastoral life, written in delectable prose,
studded with aphorisms, anecdotes, proverbs and
songs. The one thing that will give Mera Pind
a long lease of life, if not immortality, is the
fact that the author has used the Punjabi language
as it is spoken by the common people, The Punjabi
of Mera Pind is full-blooded, rugged
and masculine.
- Khushwant Singh
Punjabi Belles-Letter
This is one of the most
absorbing books which have appeared in Punjabi
during the last few years. It brings in prose
throbbing with enthusiasm, the entire panorama
of the most romantic and picturesque aspects of
rural Punjab and a phase of our culture which
after thousands of years is now machine age, and
the rising tide of political and democratic consciousness.
Feelings, passions, customs and attitudes which
have characterised our ancestors for numerous
generations, described here with delight and gusto
in imaginative writing make a deeply nostalgic
appeal to the heart which is truly touched by
the vision of a past, now in the very last lap
of its existence. Here is hoary Hinduism, as practised
and understood in the Punjab countryside, with
superficial aspects of Sikhism, superimposed on
it, and both invested with that primitive joy
in the life of nature which made our ancestors
both wise and simple, happy and responsible. The
author has been able to put across not only its
colour and form, but also its spirit, and that
deep philosophy of life, which has seeped into
the very soul of even the most untutored and least
critical Indian. This is the art and miracle of
this book, which as the reader goes through its
pages, simulates with delight and extracts its
need of praise.
Here is the entire milieu
of a village in the Malwa tract of the Punjab,
a region which is not lush green, yet is fertile
and rich; which, is Hindu as much as Sikh, unlike
the centre of the south of state, and which while
absorbing enough of the reforming spirit of Sikhism,
has yet retained a great deal of that hoary paganism
without which life grows drab and colourless.
The region had beautiful customs and manners;
it has songs and dance, furtive, romantic and
beautiful chivalry and loyalty. It has manly heroism
as well as deep feminine tenderness. Its songs
express more deeply perhaps than anywhere in India
the immortal bond of affection between brother
and sister and between mother and daughter. They
express yearning and love in words which are wonderful
in their balanced suggestiveness, love which is
neither so squeamish as to be lost in remote symbol,
nor so bold as to cry out shame on the human animal.
And the rhythm and lilt of the songs of this region
is passionate and blood-warming, like the dance
movement of its village belles. This is folk art,
beautiful in its simplicity, yet not the less
alive for being devoid of classical or academic
polish.
The author, one of the
research top writers of Punjabi and perhaps the
most penetrating student on the Sikh scripture,
the Granth Sahib, has brought alive his subject
not only with encyclopaedic thoroughness, but
also in prose which is living like the dances
and the songs of which it is narrative. It contains
more folk music and commentary there on than has
so for appeared in Punjabi, or in any other Indian
language for the matter of that. As a narrative
of the life, mind and art of a section of the
Indian people, It should find a place among other
distinguished writings on the same subject, and
should be brought over to the people of our country
as a whole in translation as much as is practicable.
The Indian reader will find in its pages what
is peculiar to this part of the Punjab, as well
as that kinship which binds the people of India
as a whole in common bonds of one culture and
outlook. Here is the peasant in his strength and
weakness, and here are the various peasant types
with their lovable characteristics. No reader
can fail to love these people whose life and art
is revealed in these pages.
The book is eloquently
illustrated with drawings, which add to its value.
Its dust jacket is beautiful, illustrative of
the pretty needle work of rural Punjab.
- Gurbachan Singh Talib
Sirsa
February 15, 1961
Published in The Tribune, March, 1961.
Life as culture history of Malwa
Mera Pind by
Giani Gurdit Singh is a veritable cultural museum
in words. The book is now running its eight revised
and enlarged edition, a rare feat for Punjabi
book. It begins as an autobiography, assumes the
character of a biography of his village Mitthewal
and ultimately turns out to be the story of the
people in eastern Malwa and southern Puad.
Culture is the total life
activity of a community that has come into existence
as a result of human intervention in the processes
of nature. Whether man confronts nature as an
antagonistic force or co-exists with it as a compatible
whole, the material consequence is the same-that
is, the creation of a third mediatory structure
which appears as a transformation of objective
environment in terms of human needs, urges and
drives.
Since culture is the total
life activity of people, it encompasses material
as well as conceptual ambit of existence. Material
culture appears as a diachronic unfolding of civilisation
in terms of its acquisitions and the conceptual
aspect pertains to the communicational strategies
of the community, which are mostly symbolic in
nature. It is the later aspect of culture that
Gurdit Singh tries to present in intimate details.
The book has two neat
divisions. The first part is autobiographical
but it also takes into account dominant beliefs
of village folks, their devotion for sadhus and
sants, their recreational activities during long
summer afternoons and also during winter nights
when, by a bonfire, epical and puranic tales get
a delightful oral rendering by an elderly member
of the community. This part also deals with the
superstitions and ritualistic misgivings indulged
in by the people.
Festivals and other auspicious
days and celebrations are painted in vivid details.
The girls' festival of Teean is described
in all its variegated colours. Giddha
— a vigorous dance by the village damsels
— is presented with wild abandon, manifested
through the bold imagery used in songs accompanying
it. Teean is a festival of the rainy
season. It begins on the third day of Sawan
month and is celebrated for 15 days. After the
scorching heat of the summer, the first showers
of the rainy season are a welcome relief, sending
young marriageable girls into rapturous, singing,
dancing and swinging.
The girls wear beautiful
clothes and deck their bodies with ornaments for
the dancing and swinging sessions. “Shauq
nall giddhe vich awan/boli pawan shagan manawan/saun
dia baddla ve/main tera jas gawan/saun mahine
ghah ho chalia/rajjan majhian gawan/giddhia pind
ver ve/lambh lambh na jain (I join the giddha
group with zest and zeal and sing songs in gay
abandon in the festivities. O the cloud of the
rainy season, I sing to your glory. Fine green
grass has sprouted in the pastures for our cattle
to graze. May the dancing spirit possess my village.
Let it not pass by it.).
The month of Sawan
arrives at the village as a dancing god. Nature
— its flora and fauna — is in a dancing
mood. The atmosphere is enchanted with the dance
of peacock and the songs of the rain-birds and
koels. This is the time when you long
to be among your dear ones. The girls, whose lovers
are fighting their battle in distant lands, feel
the pangs of separation. “He is on the front
as the war goes on. She does not know his whereabouts
to send a message. The koels sing full-throated
plaintive songs of separation. But she longs to
hear the cawing of the crow.” The outpouring
of joys and sorrows, desires and carvings, agony
and ecstasy, in the folk songs with appropriate
dance measures enthral the entire village.
Another place where women,
and more so unmarried girls, gather during nights
is called the Trinjan. Literally it means
a “women's yard” or a place where
women gather to spin and make hanks or yarn in
a group. While spinning the girls in Trinjan
sing songs of joy and sorrow. The married women
normally become nostalgic while remembering their
lives at their parental villages where they had
a little more freedom and where they did not have
to work as hard as at their marital homes. “When
she recalled the affectionate care of her brothers,
her eyes welled up and she bent on the spinning
wheel.”
And those young women
whose lovers are away, pine for them: “Charkha
main apna katan, tand terian dukhan di pawan”
(I spin the yarn of your grief as I work on my
wheel). In a short while spinning session rises
to a crescendo. The spinning wheels produce a
rhythmic drone. “Cheeke charkha Bishnie
tera/Lokan bhane mor kuukda” (People
take it for a call of the peacock when your spinning
wheel squeaks). But the elderly women (who have
come to the spinning session for reeling the yarn)
blurt out the bitter truth: “The daughter
is a homeless creature.” The parents pray
for her easy life at the in-laws. But the mother-in-law
there does not let her settle down in peace. In
this sense the daughter is an alienated being.
In fact, from the very
beginning a struggle for power and dominance begins.
The entire family structure at the in-laws is
alien and even antagonistic for the new entrant
(bride). By the time the bride settles down and
learns to dominate, another struggle begins—now
she herself has to play the role of the detested
mother-in-law.
During these long spinning
sessions mothers-in-law are invariably at the
butt end of lampooning. The songs by new brides
lay bare the tensions in the kinship system with
all the nodal points vividly emphasised, exhibiting
the semantic pulls and pushes of the structural
forces. The folk mind presents a holistic view
of life. Three stages of human life-childhood,
youth and old age — have their respective
rituals, rites and ceremonies to be performed
at different occasions.
Conception, not the birth,
is considered to be the genesis of life. There
are many rituals associated with the prenatal
development of the human organism. Myth and reality
here have dialectical relation.
There are rituals and
rites for every occasion through which the community
tries to conceptually organise its universe. They
are transmitted from generation to generation,
which helps in the perpetuation of the mythic
structure. The mythical and the empirical sustain
each other.
There are many rituals
which are performed for a normal birth. Eclipses
of the sun and the moon have to be especially
kept in mind and the poor low caste menial have
to be offered generous alms. Similarly, all “hard”
places in the village have to be avoided and sometimes
worshipped for helping a normal delivery. After
the birth, many rituals are performed for the
well being of the new-born.
As soon as the baby is
a little older, the mother and the child are given
sumptuous gifts in the form of “shushak”
which is carried to the in-laws place. Aunts of
the child also give costly gifts, especially to
a male child.
When the child grows into
a youth, it is the time of his/her engagement
and eventual marriage. The roles of the mediator
(vichola) in arranging the matches and
that of the trouble-maker and the disrupter (bhani-maar)
are hilariously presented with an intimate knowledge
of both these institutions. It seems the author
must have performed such duties during his long
innings as a public man.
- Jaspal Singh
Published in The Tribune,
18 June, 1995.
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