Punjabi novelist Dalip Kaur Tiwana passes away at 84
PATIALA : Noted Punjabi novelist Dalip Kaur Tiwana, 84, breathed her last on Friday afternoon.
She was undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Mohali for acute congestion in the lungs.
The Padma Shri recipient and Sahitya Akademi awardee was admitted at the intensive care unit (ICU) of the hospital for past three weeks after she fell ill due to the extreme cold weather.
She was first admitted at a private hospital in Patiala and was shifted to Mohali when her health deteriorated.
In 2015, Tiwana had returned the Padma Shri bestowed on her to express solidarity with writers protesting against “suppression of freedom of expression and growing communalism”.
On January 16, a delegation led by rural development and panchayats minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa met Tiwana’s family and assured them that the state government will provide financial aid for Tiwana’s treatment.
CREMATION IN PATIALA ON SATURDAY
The body will be brought to her residence at Punjabi University, Patiala, from Mohali at 8.30am on Saturday to enable people to pay their last respects. The university public relations officer said the body will be kept there on the campus before it is taken to the Bir Ji cremation ground at noon.
Tiwana was residing on the campus along with her husband Dr Bhupinder Singh and son Simranjot Singh, a faculty member in the university college of engineering. In view of her contribution to Punjabi, the university had bestowed the life fellowship on her.
CHANDIGARH : Born at Rabbon village in Ludhiana district to a family of land-owners, Dalip Kaur Tiwana’s talent blossomed in Patiala, the princely town where she studied, worked and penned fiction inspired by life around her.
An author of more than 50 books of fiction besides autobiographical writing and criticism, her second novel, Eho Hamara Jiwana (And Such Is Her Fate), published in 1968, telling the story of exploitation and suppression of women in rural Punjab, shot her into the forefront of fiction writers. The protagonist, Bhano, is one of the most memorable though tragic heroines of Punjabi fiction.
In giving voice to voiceless women, she painted with a difference a feminist landscape without raising slogans or offering easy solutions.
This novel brought the national Sahitya Akademi award to Tiwana and a lifelong appreciation and friendship with the grand dame of Punjabi letters, Amrita
Pritam. The latter hailed the entrance of the downtrodden village woman Bhano into Punjabi fiction as revolution.
It would not be wrong to say that in Bhano she achieved what Gurdial Singh has done in the classic ‘Marhi da Diva’ (The Last Flicker) in bringing forth the poignant tale of Jagseer, a landless labourer.
FIRST WOMAN DOCTORATE IN PUNJABI LITERATURE
Rising above a traumatic personal life, she became the first woman to do a doctorate in Punjabi literature and was an inspiring professor to many including the celebrated poet Surjit Patar.
She was also one of the few to have received recognition and awards at the state and national level, including the prestigious Saraswati Samman and the Padma Shri.
Yet the brave woman took the lead in the award-wapsi times by returning her Padma Shri to uphold her conviction.
Many Punjabi writers followed her by returning the Sahitya Akademi awards.
Asked why she did so and her candid reply was, “This was the highest honour I had received so I felt obliged to return it.”
PROBING MIND, STRONG PEN
Always attired in salwar-kameez, her hair loosely plaited and most often a dupatta covering her head, Tiwana could have been just another aunty ji of the neighbourhood but for her probing mind and the strong pen she wielded in laying bare the oppression of people, women and men alike and thus rubbishing the fad that a writer must be Bohemian.
Once in an interview she said, “Readers often ask me why don’t my heroines revolt and my answer is that it is enough if the reader feels that they should rebel.”
Her autobiography, Nange Pairan Da Safar (A Journey Barefoot), is yet another sensitive testament of a woman’s life told with restraint that made it all the more intense.
Tiwana will always be remembered and read for showing through her characters that there could be another and better way.