Dayan

Bhisham Sahni was a storyteller who was never moved or inspired by any movement. He had a personal relationship with art and reality, which he maintained intact until the end. Life, the irony that challenged life, and the eternal presence of aesthetics that strengthened it, were his world. Dayan was published in 1998, and it was his last collection of stories published during his lifetime. Following this, only his novel Neelu Neelima Nilofar and autobiography Aaj Ke Ateet were published. This collection, published on the fiftieth anniversary of independence, also reflects the consistent presence of the pain that Bhisham jis sensitivity had been connected to since the early dawn of independence, and which culminated in Tamas: Partition and communal brutality. The story Biro in this collection returns to Partition, to Biro who remained in Pakistan at the time of Partition and later became Salima. But the inner threads that transcend borders and repeatedly reach the streets of both countries are still alive in Biros heart. The story Witch is a reflection of the dilemmas of the middle-class mentality. Other stories also highlight the various strands of sociality as it finds its form over the past fifty years.