Phagwara poet makes and moulds peoples opinions and should be pro-people-Prof Gandam at ‘Pustak Charcha’ on his maiden anthology of poems.Quoting English poet PB Shelley, who called ‘poets unacknowledged legislators of the world’ as they influenced people and formed opinions,Prof Jaswant Singh Gandam,noted author and senior journalist,today said that a writer with ‘anakh'(dignity) kept people at the center of his writings.
Addressing a function organised by Punjabi Virsa Trust and Scape Sahitak Sanstha about ‘Pustak Charcha’ on his maiden anthology of poems ‘Bulh Seetiyan Sarna Nahin”,Prof Gandam said that though he began writing poems when he was just 12 year old,he did not get his poems published in a book form.”Though a few of my poems appeared in Punjabi newspapers and magazines, my maiden anthology of poems came out now in my 75th year of age” ,he remarked.
Calling him an accidental(‘itfaqiya’) poet and not an intentional(‘iradtan’) one, the writer told the gathering of poets and writers that he was an intentional prose writer.”Three books of my prose ie Kuchh Teriyan Kuchh Meriyan,Suttey Shehar Da Safar and Ugadey Suraj Di Akh have so far been published”,he said.”The anthology has 88 poems,104 pages while its title was designed by artist-writer Parvinderjit Singh”, he informed.
“These poems focussed on economic disparities,Kisan-mazdoor travails,’parvas'(migration abroad),resultant loneliness of the elderly parents,casteism,fanaticism,onslaught of technology,pollution,deforestation,depleting water table and also carried satirical poems”,he said.Calling literature a mirror of society,he said that it mirrored both the beauty,aestheticism and warts and moles,flaws and failings,follies and foibles of life and society.Maintaining a writer should also be a fighter for the rights of the deprived,marginalised and the oppressed,he said that writing and speaking against injustices spoke volumes of the living and being of the man/woman wielding a pen.
Reading a paper on the book,Principal Gurmit Palahi,General Secretary Punjabi Virsa Trust,said Prof Gandam’s anthology pictured contemporary truth and showed path to people for wriggling out of harsh, uncharitable, hostile contemporary situations.Quoting a Russian writer,Palahi said that poetry served both as a voice of and service to people and it was for the living,not the dead.
Punjabi writers Miss Kamlesh Sandhu(President Scape Sahitak Sanstha),SL Virdi,Sohan Sehjal,Baldev Raj Komal, Ashok Chadha,TD Chawla,Ravinder Chot,Jaswinder Kaur,Parvinderjit Singh,NRIs Karan Ajaib Singh Sangha,Dalbir Singh Kathuria,both from Canada, also spoke.Prof Gandam was honoured on this occasion by the organisers.
A set of books was presented to Kathuria.Gandam also read out three poems from his maiden anthology.