Munshi Premchand’s Garib Ki Hai

I am from North India, speak Hindi as my mother tongue, so I have  a certain amount of familiarity with Hindi Literature. When that happens, chances are that you will be familiar with the name of Munshi Premchand. Great writer, especially of short stories. Possibly one of the greatest short story writers that ever lived, though that’s a generalisation I’d be hard put to justify.

Towards the end of my stint at FTII, I had a chance to read a collection of Premchand’s work- short stories, excerpts from novels, etc- that the late Mani Kaul had put together as a script for a movie about Premchand. This was shortly after Mani had made ‘Satah Se Uththa AAdmi’ based on the life and work of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, another eminent Hindi writer. I had seen the bound script of that movie too- and yes that too was a collection of stories, poems and anecdotes. I do not know if that was the way Mani Kaul regularly worked or prepared for his movies, but it gave me a chance to read the story ‘Garib Ki Hai’.

I must confess that I was entranced, loved the story- it was so brilliantly cinematic. Nothing came of Mani Kaul’s Premchand project, I asked him about the story years later and he said ‘Do it by all means, I won’t get a chance to do it’. For the first time I quivered in my boots at the prospect of stepping where Mani Kaul had failed.

After FTII the move to Bombay came, along with domestic concerns and the need to earn a living and I kind of lost touch with my inner dreams. I did look for the story at various points, I even forgot the name but the story was etched in my being.

Now, years later I said I must look for that story and asked the local Hindi Literature knowing people to help me locate the story(and drew blanks). A bit desperate after local book shops drew a blank, I finally ventured onto Google, and sure enough a blog cropped up in Hindi that had all of Premchand’s stories. A few minutes later, I found the story- I knew from it beginning that this was it. Downloaded it, though it was a job to make the computer ‘read’ the story. Finally saved it as a ‘picture’.

Heart beating with trepidation, read the story again- oh yes it was all that I’d remembered and more.

So now I have the story, just need to write a script, find the money and make it- if only it was that simple!