Together, Apart

Poonam Saxena's translations of Mannu Bhandari and Rajendra Yadav's memoirs present a portrait of the trailblazing Hindi writer-couple's marriage and of newly independent India

- By Simar Puneet

READ together, Poonam Saxena's masterful translations of the memoirs of Hindi sahitya or literature's first 'power couple', Mannu Bhandari and Rajendra Yadav, present a composite picture of their marriage and of a young nation—they were the first generation to come of age in a newly independent India. Yadav (along with Mohan Rakesh and Kamleshwar), was a pioneer of the Nayi Kahani movement, and in later years, the editor of Hans magazine; first published by Premchand in 1930. The hallmark of the Nayi Kahani short story was the push and pull of modernity, the aspirations and concerns of the educated middle class in postcolonial India.

I first read Bhandari's memoir, Ek Kahani Yeh Bhi (This Too is a Story), which, like much of her writing, is characteristically unfussy, stark and straightforward, full of her recollections of a childhood in Ajmer (the inspiration for several of her stories), her engagement with politics and activism, teaching life, marriage, motherhood and above all, her writing—the source and sustenance of her creative existence. Her debut short story, Main Haar Gayi, was published when she was around 24, eliciting a thrill that no subsequent literary accomplishment—not even the silver jubilee celebrations of Rajnigandha, the popular film based on another one of her short stories, nor the publication and successful stage adaptations of her novels—would match.

When she met Yadav in Calcutta it was in the afterglow of his novel,