‘A Bunch of Narcissus and Other Writings of Surjit Sarna’ book review: Passionate Lament

Express News Service

Stories based on the writer’s life experiences can be very engaging due to their richness of description and palpable emotion. This is certainly true in the case of poet, writer and translator Surjit Sarna, whose Punjabi short stories have been translated into English.

Born and raised in pre-Partition Lahore, Sarna lived in Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttarakhand, and Delhi at various points in her life. She draws heavily on her time spent in each of these places for many of the stories in this collection. 

A few others, however, are works of fiction focussing on the hardships faced by Indian women. These stories show parents’ eagerness to marry off their daughters; gruesome dowry-related deaths; violent husbands; and even incestuous rapists. The selection of stories may seem wide-ranging but can easily be divided in two groups –  those based on the author’s life and those written as feminist fictional literature.

There is a stark contrast between these two groups, with the former keeping the reader highly engaged, and the latter consisting of mostly melodramatic fare that seems dated. The wealth of emotions Sarna displays while sharing the simplest of incidents from her own life is not offered in her fictionalised work. One wonders if perhaps it was lost in translation.

Most of her personal stories have been translated by her sisters Tripti and Jasbir Jain, and excerpts from her book, Vichode Ban Gaye Sadiyan or Separation Without End, have been translated by her son, diplomat and writer Navtej Sarna. Of her life stories, the ones where she speaks of the loss of her home and childhood in Lahore strike the deepest chord.

The city takes on a character all its own through her writing, replete with idiosyncrasies and truisms unique to itself. Sarna fondly remembers long-lost friends, street food and even the books she had issued from her college library just before everything was shut down and she was forced to leave the country of her birth forever.

Objects as with ‘Nargis de Phul’ or ‘A Bunch of Narcissus’ and home addresses become titular metaphors of longing to be back in that space, at that time. The ability to convey a depth of feeling through simple language is the author’s biggest strength. 

Those wary of overly sentimental reads may not enjoy this book. Further, the tremendous variance in tonality between her personal life stories and those written as works of fiction is quite irksome. However, A Bunch of Narcissus offers a rare and honest glimpse into the writer’s soul. Sarna etches her innermost feeling without fear of judgment. 

A Bunch of Narcissus and Other Writings of Surjit Sarna

Edited by: Tripti Jain

Translated by: Hina Nandrajog, Jasbir Jain, Madhuri Chawla, Navtej Sarna, Tripti Jain

Publisher: Chetna Parkashan

Pages: 181

Price: Rs 395