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| Home > Book Reviews of Literary icons > Katha Kaho Urvashi
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| | Katha Kaho Urvashi (Urvashi, Narrate the Story)
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Dr Tiwana is the winner of the 11th Saraswati Samman, instituted by K.K. Birla Foundation, for the year 2002, given for an outstanding literacy work in an Indian language, for the novel Katha Kaho Urvashi (Urvashi, Narrate the Story). The Samman comprising a cash prize of Rs five lakhs was conferred on her last August. Katha Kaho Urvashi, published in 1999, is a saga of three generations and comprises five sections spread over 600 pages, encompasses the religious didactic tale, the fable, the oral tradition, the monologue, the journal and the dialogic form. Viewed as a composite picture of reality, the novel breaks new ground and projects a broken world in which there are no black and white divisions, no saints or villains but human beings who are victims of their own impulses and frailties.
The central theme of the novel lies in the complexities of life and the cultural structures, as they strive to salvage the best in themselves. It does not have any protagonist in a conventional sense. The listener`s presence is important all through, but within the range, and the reader-narrator relationship is altered in each section. "The novel is the pinnacle of Tiwana`s long literary journey. All renowned litterateurs and critics of Punjabi literature have greatly appreciated this novel.
Prior to Saraswati Samman, Dr Tiwana got the coveted Sahitya Akademi Award in 1972 for her second novel Eho Hamara Jiwana (Such is Our Life, 1968), the story of a woman, Bhano, who lived the life of a destitute. She loses her husband very shortly after marriage and is thrown out of her husband`s house after his death. His memories haunts Bhano and she decides to commit suicide but is saved by an opium addict Narain, who later accepts Bhano as his spouse. Bhano accepts Narain, who is a good for nothing fellow only having a house and a piece of land in a village. She adjusts herself to her new social surroundings rather well. Since she was barren, Narain marries Bhagwati and becomes the father of a male child. Now he does not need Bhano and asks her to leave home. Narain poses as if he is doing a big favour by sending her to another place for the sake of her happiness.
Since the publication of Eho Hamara Jiwana, she does not seem to have looked back. A chain of novels, a spontaneous flow of creativity, followed. The novels of Dr Tiwana are basically heroine-oriented and deal with the themes regarding the women situation in their socio-cultural context. The slow awakening for their rights seems to develop through a self-analysis of the leading characteres. They journey towards the question of their existence and are directly in confrontation with society and themselves simultaneously.
Whereas the heroine in Teeli Da Nishan comes to terms with her situation of being a widow, the leading woman in Doosri Sita when raped by the village landlord could not go back to her in-laws` house and hence ends her hopes by suicide. In Hastakshar, Seema suffers at the hands of her husband Amar, who was her beloved earlier. She dies in labour after giving birth to a female child. Her death is considered a form of her rejection of the world.
Seema in her second birth in the novel Paricha becomes Simran who is the reincarnation of her mother. She has inherited the pain of her mother`s failure. Simran does not want to forget her own independence in the form of marriage.
Her finest work, Langh Gaya Darya, Dr Tiwana emerges as a stunningly powerful narrator of the decadent society in the erstwhile princely state of Patiala reflected in the day-to-day life of those connected with royalty. It is different from her other novels as no individual vision is allowed to emerge and no individual life placed centre-stage. "In its depiction of culture of the princely state, it offers itself for comparison with other similar novels, like Manohar Malgonkar`s The Princes and Nayantara Sehgal`s Mistaken Identity", says Jasbir Jain.
Most of her well-known novels are deeply rooted in the socio-cultural ethos of the erstwhile princely state of Patiala, but going beyond its confines to address questions of loneliness and rootlessness, cultural alienation and existential anguish, the individuals need to accept change and the inability to cope with its dynamics, and above all the unrecognised longing for an anchoring in the stability of the past. She is not interested in projecting the sublimity of love relations through her mute heroines.
Tiwana exposes the women of conventional thinking who are traditionally suppressed. She depicted, in her earlier novels, the helplessness of conventional and rather illiterate women, but her later novels are about the woman who is highly educated and fully conscious. Her novels reflect the reality of a woman`s life against different caste and economic backgrounds, nomadic, uprooted, compelled to live within the system of polygamy or bigamy, inhibited by her singleness, marginalized because of her barenness, controlled and famed by the patriarchal structure. They leave one with a feeling of sadness. Yet these women are strong and at times they surprise one by their boldness. The character emerges as a strong category in itself.
Dr Tiwana, author of 27 novels, has also to her credit over 100 stories published in a number of volumes. Sadhana (Endeavour), Yatra (Pilgrimage), Kise Di Dhee (Someone`s Daughter), Ik Kuri (A Girl), Tun Bharin Hungara (Please Respond), Malan (The Florist), Tera Kamra Mera Kamra (Your Room My Room) are the anthologies of her stories. She excels in narrating the woeful tale of deserted woman. Most of her stories have been translated into English, Hindi and Urdu published in various journals.
Besides novels and short stories, Dr Tiwana has written a few sensitive autobiographical accounts - Nange Pairan Da Safar (A Journey on Bare Feet, 1980) and Puchhde Ho to Suno (Listen, if You Ask, 1993). Together, these two reflect her dominant concern for social change and aesthetic values. Nange Pairan Da Safar got the Gurmukh Singh Musafir Award in 1982. The autobiographical piece is a personal and deeply moving account of woman`s struggle towards intellectual and emotional self-realisation in a hostile environment. It is a testament of faith born of deep a convictions.
Apart from fiction, short stories, autobiographical account, Dr Tiwana has written ten books on literary criticism,. Her writings gave the reader special insight into Punjab and its people. She confines her canvas to the areas of Malwa and Majha that lie around and downsteam the Sutlej. She writes about the people there, their failures and their fortunes. But she has captured their spirit through a woman`s sensibility, gives a different dimension and colouring to her writing.
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