Late on Thursday (January 8) , I learned that Gyanranjan (Gyan brother to most of his friends) had died the previous day. He was in the 90th year of his life and quite exhausted. Last November, when we talked about his health, he suddenly said he had already lived longer than he expected, seen more than he wanted, and the only gain is that “my enemies know that I still live”. When I asked who those enemies could be, he laughed: “Old friends! Who else?”
Light has been fading over Allahabad and Jabalpur for some time, and with Gyanranjan’s departure, a part of the cultural history and modern memory associated with these cities has suddenly gone dark. There’s nobody left to reveal the many secrets or deal with the questions Gyan left half-answered.
He was the most recognizable face of the sāthottarī pīrhī (post-1960 generation) of Hindi writers who burst upon the literary scene to introduce new thematic concerns and narrative style to the Hindi short story. Gyanranjan, Doodhnath Singh, Kashinath Singh, Ravindra Kalia, Mahendra Bhalla, and Vijay Mohan Singh brought with them a spirit of rebellion. Their language was sharp, irreverent, unostentatious and charmingly cynical. Emerging tensions in social and interpersonal relationships, feelings of abandonment, disillusionment, loneliness of the younger generation, existential angst and frustration emerge as major themes. All this was a major change from the dull realism of earlier generations of Gandhians and progressives, the abstract, airy and artificial prose of Sachchidanand Vatsyayan “Agyeya” as well as the arthouse lyricism of writers such as Nirmal Verma.
It was a generation that stood against fakeness in all forms. Its collective output belonged to the Left, but most of them were not politically leftist in the proper sense. That choice came to them later. But their influence extended across literary frontiers, trends, and schools of their time. They were equally loved and feared by their contemporaries.
Gyanranjan’s short stories like Ghanta, Pita, outgoing, To the side of the fence and to the side are considered era defining, along with those of Doodhnath Singh (Raktpāt, Reachh), Kashinath Singh (On the log bed), and Ravindra Kalia (Nau Sāl Chhoti Patna). Many of these writers went on to write novels and works of literary criticism. If one has to name a single iconic creation of this generation, it would undoubtedly be Ghanta.
In GhantaGyanranjan created perhaps the most memorable character of post-Independence Hindi short fiction, Kundan Sarkar. A high official in the government, Kundan Sarkar is a culture addict and loves to assemble artists and writers around himself, including the ones he would otherwise consider misfits or a part of the riff raff. His high position fascinates writers and rebels, who are much lower on the social ladder. Not all of them play the ball with him, including the group of dissenters and those who have chosen marginality. The place they assemble at is called Petrola. The nondescript Petrola is not just a haunt of the disgruntled, but a kind of fortress — a sort of dividing line. On the other side lies the corrupting world of power, privilege and pretension. That is the world of Kundan Sarkar.
The narrator of the story, a member of the Petrola group, somehow cannot resist the temptation of hanging around with Sarkar, get free booze and explore the further reaches of the class divide — in short, become his hour (bell). This is the story of his growing disillusionment, rebellion and final, spectacular humiliation. When he gets back to Petrola after his fall from grace, his friends just laugh it away and sort of welcome him back. Many filmgoers may remember the final note in Roman Polanski’s film, Chinatown: “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown’.” But it came more than a decade later Ghanta was written. In many ways, Gyan was way ahead of his time.
The Hindi short story was never the same after Gyanranjan and his friends made their decisive literary intervention. For almost a decade, their taut, fearless and smart prose made the short story the leading genre of Hindi literature, displacing poetry from its pedestal. However, by the time their decade ended, there were signs of exhaustion. Gyanranjan himself was the first one to recognize it. His interest in his own writing declined. Not only was the feverish and relentless creativity bound to taper off, the socio-political ferment of the time gradually knocked the middle-class avant garde off its literary perch, underlining the limitations of their vision. The irresistible force of Left-wing radicalism in the wake of Naxalbari altered the cultural scenario. Many of the writers turned towards the Left.
Gyan always worked himself to exhaustion. He had already left his beloved Allahabad to join as a teacher in GS College in Jabalpur. On him fell the responsibility of bringing out Pahalundoubtedly the most important and forceful Hindi literary magazine of post-Independence India. Initially, he co-edited it with Kamla Prasad, a leftist teacher and critic, and later single-handedly. From the late 1970s onwards, readers received their copy of Pahal with their address written in Gyananjan’s distinctive handwriting. This and his postcards brought the readers and contributors into a close, almost intimate, relationship with him. His warmth was palpable, even to those who never met him. His anger too. Gyanranjan the editor overtook Gyan the writer.
He was closely associated with the Communist Party of India, but wore his Left credentials lightly and never became an apparatchik. He remained a left liberal and a bit of a Gandhian Marxist, although the image of a post-1960 literary rebel and angry sage of Hindi fiction stuck to him all his life. Almost three generations of writers walked with Gyanranjan and Pahal for almost 35 years till he himself reached the second point of exhaustion and decided to call it a day after bringing out 90 issues of his magazine. He was persuaded to resume its publication. After a further run of 35 issues, it closed down. The iconic writer and a great literary editor-activist could not find a person or a group who could carry on his work. He will be remembered for his uncompromisingly secular personality and his lifelong struggle with the Hindi establishment. Sadly in the last five years, the Hindi world has lost two of its greatest literary editors (Mangalesh Dabral in 2020 to Covid, and Gyanranjan in 2026). We won’t see the likes of them again.
Asad Zaidi is a Hindi poet and publisher. The views expressed are personal
