Upendranath Ashkਉਪੇਂਦਰਨਾਥ ਅਸ਼ਕ

Upendranath Ashk (14 December 1910 to 19 January 1996) was a Hindi and Urdu novelist, short story writer and playwright from Jalandhar in Punjab, best known for Girti Deewaren (Falling Walls), the long semi-autobiographical novel cycle he worked on for most of his life. Over a career of about sixty years he published more than a hundred volumes of fiction, poetry, plays, memoir, criticism and translation, moving between Urdu and Hindi, and between Lahore, Bombay, Delhi and Allahabad. His writing stayed close to ordinary middle-class life, and to the strain that ambition, money and illness put on it.

Early life: Jalandhar, Lahore and the pen name Ashk

Ashk was born Upendranath Sharma in Jalandhar on 14 December 1910. He began composing Punjabi couplets at the age of eleven, and began writing in Urdu in 1926 under the guidance of the Jalandhari poet Mohammad Ali Azar. His first Urdu poem appeared in the Sunday supplement of Milap, the Lahore Urdu daily, and while he was still in college he published his first collection of short stories, Nau Ratan, in 1930. It was during this phase that he took the pen name Ashk, the Urdu word for teardrop, in memory of a childhood friend whose death had left a lasting mark on him.

After graduating in 1931 he taught briefly at his old college, then left for Lahore with the poet and journalist Mela Ram Wafa. For the next three years he worked as a reporter for Vande Mataram, the newspaper of Lala Lajpat Rai, and then as a translator and assistant editor for the Daily Veer Bharat and the weekly Bhoochal, while continuing to publish poems and stories in local journals. He married his first wife, Sheela Devi, in 1932.

In 1932, on the advice of the Hindi author Premchand, with whom he kept up a correspondence, Ashk switched to writing in Hindi, at first writing each story in Urdu and then translating it into Hindi. His second collection of short stories, Aurat ki Fitrat, was published in Hindi in 1933 with an introduction by Premchand. Two years later, family money troubles pushed him toward a steadier career, and he resolved to study law and become a sub-judge. Just as he completed his degree, Sheela Devi died of tuberculosis. In his grief he gave up the law and resolved to become a full-time writer, and to write realistically about suffering and poverty. His 1936 story Dachi is regarded as a milestone of progressive realism in Hindi-Urdu fiction.

What is Girti Deewaren about?

Ashk began work on Girti Deewaren, meaning Falling Walls, while he was at All India Radio in the early 1940s. It is a semi-autobiographical novel cycle that follows Chetan, a young Punjabi man trying to become a writer, across five years of his life in the mid-1930s, in Jalandhar, Lahore and Shimla. The first volume was published in 1947, and further volumes followed over the following decades, including Shahar Men Ghoomta Aaina and Ek Nanhi Kandeel, as the cycle grew into a vast chronicle of everyday middle-class life.

The novel is remembered for its detail rather than its plot. Chetan's failures, his family quarrels, his search for work and his stubborn hope of a literary life are recorded at a pace meant to catch the rhythm of ordinary days. Penguin, which published the first English translation of the cycle in 2015, compares the book's ambition to Marcel Proust, and Ashk himself regarded Girti Deewaren as his greatest contribution to literature. Daisy Rockwell, who wrote a critical biography of Ashk in 2004, treats the cycle as the centre of his work.

Radio, Bombay films and the move to Allahabad

In 1939 Ashk spent two years at the Preetnagar commune near Amritsar, where he edited the Hindi-Urdu journal Preet Lari. In 1941 he was hired by All India Radio as a playwright and Hindi adviser. His colleagues at the radio included Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander, Patras Bokhari, Meeraji, Noon Meem Rashid and Rajinder Singh Bedi, a circle of writers who shaped modern Urdu and Hindi literature together. In 1941 he also separated from a short-lived second marriage and married Kaushalya Devi.

In 1944 he moved to Bombay to write dialogue and screenplays for the production company Filmistan, working with Shashdhar Mukherji and the director Nitin Bose. He wrote dialogue, stories and songs, and even acted in two films, Mazdoor and Aath Din. In Bombay he became involved with the Indian People's Theatre Association and wrote one of his best known plays, Tufan se Pahale, which was produced on stage by Balraj Sahni. The play, which was critical of communalism, was later banned by the British government.

In 1946 Ashk contracted tuberculosis, and in early 1947 he was moved to the Bel Air Sanatorium in Panchgani, where he remained for two years. Girti Deewaren was first published during that stay, in 1947, and he also composed his well known poem Barghad ki Beti. In 1948 the government of Uttar Pradesh gave Ashk and the Hindi poet Nirala five thousand rupees each to help them recover from their illnesses. The grant helped Ashk move to Allahabad, where he lived for the rest of his life.

Plays, stories and translations

Ashk was a prolific playwright. His plays include Jay Parajay (1937), Swarg ki Jhalak (1938), Lakshmi ka Swagat, Qaid, Udan, Alag-Alag Raste, Chhatha Beta (1948) and Anjo Didi. His other novels include Sitaron ke Khel (1937), Garam Rakh (1952), Bari-Bari Aankhen (1954) and Shahar Men Ghoomta Aaina (1963). His story collections include Judai ki Sham ke Geet (1933) and Kale Sahab (1950), and his poetry collections include Deep Jalega (1950) and Chandni Raat aur Ajgar (1952).

He also translated into Hindi, including works by Dostoevsky and the playwright Eugene O'Neill, and edited anthologies. His memoir Manto Mera Dushman, published in 1956, records his friendship and rivalry with Manto, and Chehre Anek followed in 1985. His humour survives in stories such as Hats and Doctors, first published in Hindi in 1966 as Topiyan aur Doctor, in which a dapper Lucknow man hides a painful sensitivity to cold behind a parade of hats. Daisy Rockwell's English translation of that story and others appeared as Hats and Doctors from Penguin in 2013.

Honours and later life

Ashk received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1965, the first Hindi dramatist to receive the award for playwriting. He also received the Soviet Land Nehru Award in 1972 and the Iqbal Award in 1996, the year he died. His son, Neelabh Ashk, became a poet and translator. In Allahabad he kept writing into old age, still adding to the Girti Deewaren cycle, which he nearly but not quite finished in his lifetime. He died in Allahabad on 19 January 1996, aged eighty-five.

Legacy: why Ashk still matters

Ashk's career bridges two languages and two literary worlds. He began in Punjabi couplets and Urdu, moved to Hindi on Premchand's advice, and carried the cities of Punjab, Jalandhar, Lahore and Shimla, into Hindi literature. The Caravan calls him one of the titans of twentieth-century Hindi literature, and Penguin praises his masterful portrayal, by turns humorous and remarkably profound, of the everyday lives of ordinary people.

For Punjabi readers he is a reminder that some of Hindi literature's largest works grew out of Punjab's towns and its Urdu press. Rockwell's critical biography, published by Katha in 2004, and her translations have brought him to English readers, but most of his hundred-plus volumes remain to be discovered by readers outside Hindi and Urdu. The best place to start is Girti Deewaren, the Jalandhar novel he spent a lifetime writing.