A writer’s retreat

At Premchand’s village, Lamhi, recently, it was painful to see a neglected memorial that does little to celebrate his immense legacy

- Poonam Saxena

A few weeks ago, I went to Varanasi on a pilgrimage. Not to a temple, but to Lamhi, the birthplace of Hindi literature’s greatest writer, Munshi Premchand (1880-1936).

Lamhi was a tiny village when Premchand was born. His grandfather, Gursahay Lal, moved there as the patwari or land recorder. His son, Ajaib Lal, found work as a postal clerk. Premchand, born after three girls (of whom only one survived), was a mischievous child, given to stealing sugarcane and mangoes from fields and orchards, leaving the owners very cross. He loved, and was excellent at, gilli danda.

In this way, his childhood was spent, until it fractured.

When he was eight, his mother Anandi Devi died, casting a long, deep shadow over his life. His stories and novels are full of characters whose mothers die when they are seven or eight years old. His father married again, but the little boy never got the love he craved from his stepmother. By the time he was 17, his father had died too.