Book review: ‘Hymns in Blood’ | Trauma beside the soan

Express News Service

Nanak Singh, widely regarded as the father of the Punjabi novel, needs no introduction to those familiar with Punjabi literature. The Sahitya Akademi award-winner had little formal education but went on to create a prodigious oeuvre of 59 works spanning novels, short stories, plays, poems, essays and translations.

Singh has set this haunting story (first published in 1948 and titled Khoon de Sohile) in the hamlet of Chakri on the banks of the Soan river near Rawalpindi. It’s a near-idyllic scenario with Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims living a peaceful life, celebrating festivals like Lohri and Diwali together, putting up with each others’ idiosyncrasies, covering up small scandals, protecting people from the lash of public venom, holding a basic respect for everyone. Yes of course, small fissures crop up, the kind that are inevitable when human beings coexist, but the author makes it clear that the will to pull as one is very much present in the villagers.

But this story is set in 1947. Malign clouds have already amassed on the horizon and suddenly no one is impervious to disquiet, suspicion and an aggression which carries inside it dangers of savage violence. There are stalwarts like the village’s most respected elder Baba Bhana, trying his best to disseminate the idea of peaceful coexistence and though initially he is listened to, slowly the outside world––the chaos of a country being rent apart––starts to seep into this village, and the effect of Baba’s wise words start eroding.

His adopted family of a mother and her son and daughter are Muslims, and that relationship, while never for a moment coming under any strain, does stretch the already taut fabric of tolerance in a country on the cusp of Partition. Even as reports start rolling in of attacks on the Sikhs and Hindus in villages around Chakri, their Muslim brethren vow to protect them from the maelstrom; Chakri is reputed to have the most tolerant and trustworthy Muslim population in these parts.

But then, the village gets its own disruptor in the form of a malevolent munshi, Abdul Rahman, who openly scoffs at the notion of the villagers living quietly together, and starts to sow seeds of dissent. Chakri, once a hamlet of much verdant beauty, with the Soan flowing swift and deep besides it, is quickly turned into a refugee camp where people flock together and try to make sense of the sudden tumult in their lives.

What follows is predictable but heartbreaking. Singh draws up a horrifying picture of what happens when man turns against man, when politics plays a fell hand, when blood-letting becomes an act of vengeance. In it lie lessons for contemporary India, too, for those who would see, acknowledge and absorb those lessons. 

The closing scenes of this story has the poignant picture of the 18-year-old Seema and the 70-year-old Baba walking away from their broken lives, towards a horizon that has all the hues of fear, uncertainty, towards a future that holds more questions than answers.

Singh’s story rises above everything, detailing the trauma of a land broken up, of bonds shattered, the sound of once hearty laughter dissipating into the roiling clouds, the abrupt stilling of folk songs–– tappas, the giddha. This is a wail from the depths of my soul, writes Singh in the Foreword; and indeed, this raw passionate story touches a chord.

Hymns in Blood
By: Nanak Singh
Translated By: Navdeep Suri
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Pages: 239
Price: Rs 499