NIRMAL VERMA (1929-2005) was an acknowledged master of Hindi prose and one of the pioneers of the
Nai Kahani
(new story) movement in Hindi. Throughout his life he was known as a major voice among the Indian intelligentsia for consistently upholding the right of individual liberty and freedom of expression. He famously took a stand against Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during the Emergency (1975-77), and he also advocated the cause of a Free Tibet. He traveled widely in Europe and the USA including many years in Prague, leaving after the Soviet invasion. With his fiction and also reportage for
The Times of India
, he
earned
the title "an Indian writer exiled in Europe."
Readers International published the first collection of his stories available in English outside India:
The World Elsewhere and Other Stories
(1988), winner of the Sahitya Akademi award. He also won the Jnanpith's Murtidevi Award for his essays, and in 1999 he received the highest literary award of India, the Bharatiya Jnanpith Award for the totality of his works, stories, novels, essays, travelogues, and translations.
The Crows of Deliverance (
1991), his second collection translated into English from Readers International, touches on what he felt were key themes in his stories (from a 2002 interview):
"My works essentially deal with situations arising out of troubled relationships among the members of the same family or strained man-woman ties. Indians are very accustomed to the joint family system with strong ties of kinship. But in the last 30-40 years, increasing industrialisation and massive migration of people has taken its toll on the system. With the evolution of the nuclear family. Everyone now has to lead his own life. The disintegration of the joint family has snatched the feeling of security from individuals who now have to bear the strains and tensions alone.
"The second most important development is the emergence of an independent woman -- a woman not dependent on others but a person who has the capacity to stand on her own feet. In the past, the Indian woman has been a victim of many malpractices and injustices that were operating in our family system. The emergence of the 'new' woman has created a sort of a revolution in the network of human relationships in society and also led to peculiar tensions. These important developments in the Indian family system and society have created situations in relationships that have become central themes of my fiction."