Amritlal Nagar

Amrit Aur Vish

(Lok Bharti Prakashan, Allahabad; 1966)

(Sahitya Academy Awardee-Hindi-1967)

"Sri Amritlal Nagar (b. 1916) is a distinguished novelist and author. Born in a Gujarati family domiciled in Uttar Pradesh, Sri Nagar took to literary writing at a very early age and, but for a brief spell at Akashvani, Lucknow, as a Producer of Hindi plays during 1953-56, has devoted all his time and energy to his creative pursuits. Gifted with a prolific pen and a keen sense of humour, Sri Nagar has to his credit more than thirty published works to date, which cover many genres and include translations from Gujarati and Marathi, as well as a novel based on the Tamil classic Sitappadikaram.

A stalwart in the Premchand tradition, Sri Nagar wields his pen to voice the common man's trials and aspirations, in a prose at once colloquial and vivid. His best known novel Boond Aur Samudra (1956) bears witness to this concern for the common man and is a vivid and intimate picture of his life in a Lucknow mohalla.

The Award book, Amrit Aur Vish, is his latest novel depicting the life of the people in an urban locality struggling against poverty, avarice, superstition and. moral degradation towards social progress. For its wide sweep of imagination, its realistic portrayal, narrative power and vigour, it has been hailed as an outstanding contribution to contemporary Hindi literature " (Citation)

Amrit Aur Vish is a social novel of special dimensions based on contemporary social life. It is based on the reminiscences of the older generation and on the experiences of the author's own generation, covering almost the whole of this century. The book presents a panorama of multifarious types of characters originating from the families of feudal lords, nawabs, emerging bourgeois, the neo-rich class and the bureaucracy, the middle class, the lower middle class and the downtrodden, they represent both the trends, i.e. virtuous and vicious.

While depicting the younger generation, the author has been able to clearly illustrate the new facts of our life that the younger generation display. Even though they seem to possess an uncontrolled, unchannelised and anarchistic revolutionary fervour, nevertheless, their activities and tendencies reflect their deep love and concern for human justice, equity and conscience. Characters like Ramesh and Rani represent the virtuous potential of the younger generation in the lower middle­class structure of our society. They are both realistic and idealistic, full of noble ideas with the capacity resist and assert and are forward-looking. Rani is a widow from childhood. She loves Ramesh. Ramesh accepts her as his wife despite objections from both sides. Rani also withstands the pressures of her surroundings and acts bravely. Lachho, however, represents the misguided youth who comes to the right path at the end.

Putti guru is an interesting character. He is an orthodox Brahmin, a fanatic and conservative devotee and an addict. Rani's father is a moneyless thakur (Rajput) who is driven to vicious means of livelihood. Mr.and Mrs Khanna (Bahanji) are typical and familiar social reformers commonly found in our literary fictions and f1lms. The roles of such characters in society can never be underestimated.

The novel creates a powerful satire in the descriptions of various events. One such example is the catastrophic event, the devastating flood in the Gomti River which swept Lucknow and its surrounding areas. The distinctive aspect of this novel is the creative style which does not hide from the readers the sources from which the author has drawn. In this process the author traces the real characters from his experiences of life and draws their parallels in the fictional fabrics of his creativity. Thus the novel creates parallels between facts and fiction and they never meet in the two-fold plot. However, these two folds of the plot have their inter-relations in the creative process of the novelist. Thus the novel presents a unique combination of the life story of the narrator as well as the fictional part of the story told by the narrator divulging the secrets of his own crea­tive process in particular and the creative process of all novel-writing in general. It is in this respect that the novel deserves the attention of all literary minded people.

Raj Kumar Saini

 (Source: Sahitya Academy Awards – Books and Writers – 1955-1978

Published by Sahitya Academy. ISBN 81 7201 014 1)