By Ravinder Singh Sodhi
Some Punjabi literary artists of the last generation had earned a good name in the field of writing in English. Dr. Mohan Singh Diwana, Principal Teja Singh, Prof. Gurbachan Singh Talib, Dr. Gopal Singh Dardi, Dr. Attar Singh, and Dr. Taran Singh are some prominent among them.
There are many Indian writers who have written exclusively in English. Khushwant Singh (English), Mulk Raj Anand(English), Rajinder Singh Bedi(Urdu), and some others can also be named in this respect. On the contrary, some like Niranjan Tasneem, got a degree in English literature and also taught this subject but they did not write much in English. Rather he was a good writer of Punjabi literature.
In the same category, we have one more literary artist with us who did an M.A. and Ph.D. in English, a Graduate Diploma in Education from NSW(Australia), TOEFL(Test of English as a Foreign language,1978), and provided coaching to IELTS students. His name is Avtar S Sangha and he lives in Sydney after teaching there for 7 years.
His stories and middles in English had appeared in The Tribune, Chandigarh, in the eighties and nineties. VIPULA, a Telgu magazine of Hyderabad, had used his eleven stories after translating them into Telgu. Dr. Sangha started writing in Punjabi in 2000 after getting permanent immigration to Sydney. His news magazine ‘The Punjab Herald’ which is published in Sydney, is his well-known accomplishment.
Recently his book of English short stories ‘Storm in a Teacup and other stories’ has come into the market. These stories encompass the Australian horizons, some portray the Indian system, some are a nice commentary on international issues, and some imbibe in themselves the psychology not only of human beings but also of animals.
The insight of the writer does impress the readers of these stories. That is why the former Vice Chancellor of GND, Amritsar Dr. SP Singh had stated,” the writer had graciously recounted the psyche of his characters who focus in the current regeneration of homo-sapiens, prevalent hypocrisy and corrupt inclinations in countries like India, the rat race and pursuit for settlement in the ‘green pastures, the exquisite treatment of animal psychology as it is founded in ‘Rambo,’ so on and so forth.” The current anthology carries 31 short stories and one causerie and the volume is 168 pages.
The book is a smorgasbord of literary masala and I hope the readers will definitely relish this spicy bunch of fiction in the international language of English.
Ravinder Singh Sodhi is a writer based in Richmond, BC, Canada.
