Phanishwar Nath `Renu'
Phanishwar Nath `Renu'
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Ian Woolford is a professor of Hindi at Melbourne's La Trobe University. The UK-born American has been teaching in Australia for the last three years, and is now working on a book on writer Phanishwar Nath `Renu'. He talks to Kim Arora
I've spent over a year going back and forth to Renu's village in Bihar's Araria district, mostly working on his novel, Maila Aanchal.
It has over a hundred folk songs. I went to the village after reading Maila Aanchal be cause I thought, my god, there is something special here! Renu un derstood something very special about his motherland and his vil lage which is very difficult to ex press in a Hindi novel. I wanted to go to the village to find out what is happening now.
So I went and I learnt that Renu himself was a singer and performer. There were still some elderly people left -this was ten years ago when I first went there -who remem bered singing with Renu. And of course, they performed this tradition. Now there is a new younger generation that is doing this... I re corded it. And now I'm writing about this con nection between local performance and Hindi literature. There is a feeling in the village... they say, gaane ke liye koi nahin bacha hai aajkal (there is no one left to sing today). This is a very sad feeling. But coming from the outside as I do, I can see the sense of loss, but also the joy that this tradition existed at all. The joy in its memory and that an amazing figure like Phanishwar Nath Renu wrote about this and that we can still have it in our presence by reading it. I am writing about this in a very positive way , that even in the 21st century we can experience this.
