Puran Gaatha: A Partition Saga

The Partition continues to cast its long shadow on the Indian psyche. Puran Chand, who migrated from Pakistan on foot when he was just nine years old, spends his life mastering the art of reinvention: a farmhand in his childhood, he became an army soldier at eighteen, only to be relieved pension-less eight years later, having lost his left hand in an off-duty accident. Struggling to make ends meet, the newly-married Puran takes up any job that comes his way—office peon, shopkeeper, street vendor—gradually becoming a small landowning farmer. In the winter of his life, Puran lives in the lap of comforts in Chandigarh as his children have risen to coveted roles across industries—particularly, son Govardhan Gabbi, a noted Punjabi writer, and granddaughter Wamiqa Gabbi, a popular actress working in Punjabi and Hindi films. Yet mundane anxieties, such as pending bills and chores, as well as the longing to visit his village often grip him, confounding the young in the family. As Puran looks back on his life, what emerges is a tale that illuminates both the mutual and the individual impressions left behind by historical events on successive generations of a family and a people. Govardhan Gabbi’s Puran Gaatha: A Partition Saga is a heart-warming addition to the literature on the Partition, which is an ongoing negotiation with the world and the self—a ceaseless spring of stories of resilience and the trials of rebuilding one’s life from scratch in a new homeland.