On March 19, 1935, Munshi Premchand, from his temporary home at Hindu Colony in Dadar, wrote to his friend Hashamuddin: " Mumbai is a very commercial city and the climate here doesn't suit me. I am leaving it soon.'' After spending just nine months in the city where he wrote a film called Mazdoor, Premchand returned to his hometown Varanasi, dejected and disappointed. He died there the very next year.
Ironically, the city which failed to fascinate the legendary writer is outperforming even his hometown Varanasi and his nearby ancestral village, Lamahi, to commemorate his 130th birth anniversary, which fell on July 31. Director Mujeeb Khan is set to stage ‘Prem Utsav' from August 1 to August 10, which features 54 shows based on as many stories from Premchand's rich oeuvre-304 short stories, 14 novels and three plays.
The father of modern Hindi-Urdu literature, Premchand became the common man's writer simply because he had his finger on his pulse. "Before Premchand, Hindi-Urdu writers either depicted escapist fantasies or wrote about the elite. Premchand talked about the poor peasantry, the exploitative, decadent feudal system of early 20th-century India,'' says the 50-year-old, bearded Khan who, for the last five years, has virtually lived with Premchand's stories.
Full report here Times of India
No comments:
Post a Comment