IMAGINE TRAVELLING IN a public transport bus and suddenly finding the face of a Punjabi writer peering down at you from behind the driver’s seat, with a quote of his!

Aneman Singh’s piece on the edit page in the Punjabi Tribune of August 28, 2020, narrates a beautiful story about how he, on his bus journey to Sunam aboard a Muktsar to Malerkotla bus that was taking a route via Sunam-Sangrur, chanced across this rather unique scenario.

“I was just easing into my seat when I looked up and saw a board with Ram Sarup Ankhi’s smiling face mounted on the mesh behind the driver’s seat, with a quote of his about the last rites… When I alighted from the bus, I asked the driver about the board. He said he used to read Ankhi a lot, and would often feel that the characters that Ankhi Sahib portrayed in his novels were from the very villages he knew,” Aneman Singh wrote in his middle, published under the title, ‘Apni Mitti Da Rukh – Ram Sarup Ankhi’.

“Ankhi Sahib would often spend hours at my shop, talking about literary things,” Aneman Singh revealed, and narrated his experiences of interviewing the great writer who has left behind beautiful books such as Kothe Kharrak Singh, Dulle Di Dhab, Partaapi, Bheema, Zameena Wale, Kanak Da Qatleam, Malhe Jharhian, Gelo, Bas Hor Nahi and many more.

Literary critics have often noted how Sahitya Akademi Award winner Ankhi’s characters came largely from a cluster of some four dozen villages of Mansa, Bathinda, Barnala and Sangrur, a fact that showed how a deep connect with your local people and roots could make you a writer with universal appeal.

Ankhi (1932-2010) served as an English teacher in a government school, but wrote in Punjabi language all his life. Recalling how the writer Krantipal has kept alive Ankhi’s memories by curating all his personal effects, such as turban, soap case, vanity mirror, wrist watch, clothes etc, Aneman Singh wonders what kind of a world it be if Punjabis actually started honouring and commemorating their authors and achievers the way that driver of the bus had done which he rode till Sunam.

Incidentally, Aneman Singh informs that the third volume of selected writings from “Kahani Punjab”, a magazine that Ankhi used to bring out, will soon hit book stores. The first two volumes were brought out to mark the occasion of the 100th edition of “Kahani Punjab.” Currently, Krantipal is doing a yeoman’s service of continuing with the publication of “Kahani Punjab”.

If you ever notice a writer’s portrait gazing at you at a bus stand, on a street corner, from outside the wall of a school, or in your local bazaar, please let us know – that will be a day to celebrate.

Great writers do not depend upon people’s remembrances; it is we, the people, who need their memories to be counted as a civilisation.

(Today, August 28, would have been the 89th b’day of Ram Sarup Ankhi. – Editor)