Sanjeev Chopra
Shortlisted for the 2026 VoW Book Award for translation from Punjabi to English, this fascinating book, first published as Neela Ghumiar in 2013, presents seventeen iconic poets, potters, politicians, publishers, thespians and conmen who shaped Delhi’s Punjabi cultural life, irrespective of their birthplace.
Ajeet Cour, who won the Sahitya Akademi Award for her two-part autobiographical works, Khanabadosh (The Vagabond) and Koora Kabara (Garbage), witnessed the trauma of Partition. She cannot, and does not, extricate herself from the pain and anguish captured in Amrita Pritam’s iconic verse of lament, invoking Waris Shah to witness the blood-soaked Chenab and the mayhem in Lahore.
Khushwant on top
The first entry is on Khushwant Singh, whose works range from The Sikhs and Train to Pakistan to his irreverent column With Malice towards One and All. His support for Indira Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi was shaken by Operation Blue Star, prompting him to return his Padma Bhushan. He nevertheless remained a strong critic of Bhindranwale and the Khalistan movement.
Next is the biographical sketch of Gurcharan Singh, ‘The Blue Potter’, the father of modern Indian studio pottery, after whom this book is named. His life and work have been captured beautifully in the short documentary The Swan and the Lotus, which I had the pleasure of viewing at the IIC.
Amrita Pritam was the exalted rmpress of words. Her father had been Ajeet’s Gurmukhi tutor, and Cour held her in the highest esteem for her voice, wit, poetry and defiance of patriarchy. Yet she disagreed with Pritam’s admiration for Indira Gandhi, including during the Emergency. Her feud with Krishna Sobti over Zindaginama also cast a shadow over her ethical integrity. I was privileged to hear her acceptance speech for the Jnanpith Award in 1982, when I was a trainee journalist with the Economic Times. Pritam and Sobti were bitter rivals, though both were close to Ajeet, who struggled to maintain the balance in this small literary circle.
Magician of Words
Balwant Gargi has been called the Magician of Words, and there were few like him who had such command over language. I had the occasion of meeting him with another thespian, Mohan Maharishi, who produced Einstein, and I have a copy of his book The Naked Triangle. His bohemian lifestyle was entirely at odds with that of a conventional Punjabi Bania.
Bhapa Pritam Singh began as a granthi at a Namdhari gurdwara before learning typesetting in Amritsar. He later established a successful publishing enterprise in Delhi, bringing out works by leading Punjabi writers. Interestingly, his early commercial success came from printing railway platform tickets after Independence.
The first six entries are comparatively longer; the next eleven are shorter. She writes about Prime Minister VP Singh as ‘Raja or Faquir’. Her association with him began only after he had demitted office, following the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations that changed Indian polity forever. Jagjit Singh was a celebrated ghazal singer and, like Ajeet, admired Shiv Batalvi, though Cour felt his deeds did not match his words.
Batalvi, the King of Anguish, gave Punjabi poetry a new vocabulary. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award at 31 for Loona, a radical reinterpretation of a woman trapped by caste and patriarchy, but died young.
The exceptional bureaucrat MS Randhawa also features prominently. His contributions included promoting theatre and the arts, supporting the farmers’ publication Nawan Pind, establishing a museum devoted to Sikh history and developing Chandigarh’s iconic Rose Garden.
Legendary broadcaster
KS Duggal was the legendary broadcaster and founding Station Director of AIR Jalandhar. Budding authors can take a cue from his writing regime: working in his study from 4 am to noon, with tea and breakfast served there, away from newspapers and the telephone! He too was distressed by Operation Blue Star and complained to AIR that the news of tanks breaching the sanctity of the Golden Temple was being announced as an Army victory over enemy territory. This is one permanent scar that will take a long, long time to heal.
Kulwant Singh Virk, whom she calls the Waris Shah of short stories, had a writing style she describes as Virkai. He too writes about Partition, but in his narrative, Khabbal, he includes not just human beings but even their cattle. “Everything in Pakistan seems displaced, even the animals that have been left behind in abandoned homes, looking around with their forlorn eyes, and stepping cautiously in unfamiliar places.”
Devendra Satyarthi was fascinated by Ramkinkar Baij, the Santiniketan sculptor behind the Yaksha and Yakshini statues outside the RBI in New Delhi. His travelogue Lanka Desh Hai Colombo seamlessly connects past and present. Rajendra Singh Bedi, equally at home in Punjabi and Urdu, wrote Ek Chadar Maili Si, which I read in college and still remember vividly.
Artist-yogi-poet
Sohan Qadri, the artist-yogi-poet, was unfamiliar to me before this book. Born Sohan Singh, he adopted the Qadri name from a shrine in his village and settled in Copenhagen, devoting himself to art, yoga and poetry. In contrast, the penultimate portrait examines Yogi Bhajan, who learnt yogic postures from the controversial Dhirendra Brahmachari before moving to Canada and building a cult following around claims of spiritual authority.
The last tribute is to the nightingale of Jammu, Padma Sachdev, who was called the Dogri ‘Habba Khatoon’ by the then Chief Minister Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1971 for her collection of poems, Meri Kavita, Mere Geet. Although fluent in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, she chose to write in her mother tongue, Dogri, reviving interest in a language that even the Dogra kings had ignored during their century-long rule from 1846 to 1947.
In fine, The Blue Potter is a kaleidoscope of Ajeet Cour’s world. Punjab emerges less as a territory than a cultural orbit centred on Delhi’s drawing rooms and auditoriums. This Punjabiyat deserves revival after the traumas of 1947, 1984, migration to Canada and the menace of drugs. Yet the book offers hope. Punjab’s geography may have shrunk, but its cultural sphere transcends its borders.
