Embers of Social Revolution in Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Short-Stories
Ayesha Irfan
DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16879570
Abstract. Bedi acknowledges that he writes about the common people, their joys and sorrows and that he did not strictly subscribe to any ideology. He feels that it is his social realism and his candid approach to writing that led people to label him as a progressive and he did not mind this tag. Like his contemporaries he could not help being stirred by the partition of India, and this is often the backdrop of major literature produced during this period including that of Bedi. The writer who had the greatest influence on Bedi’s craft was Anton Chekov. Bedi wrote nearly eighty short stories, including “Garam Coat”, “Lajwanti,” “Apne Dukh Mujhe de do”, “Kalyani”, “Grahan”, “Where is the Funeral Procession”, “Give me your Sorrows”, “Too Tall for Marriage”, “Dus Minute Barish Mein,” and “Vitamin B”. Bedi’s stories candidly display human emotions and his subjects belong to the middle and lower middle-classes. With sharp precision he navigates the everyday lives of common people; while placing them in their cultural milieu, he explores the social inequalities and economic problems that middle classes in India face.
Keywords. Rajinder Singh Bedi, Rashid Jahan, “Lajwanti”, “Quarantine”, “Maithun”, “Vitamin B”, “Grahan”, “Give me Your Sorrows”, “Bas ek Cigarettee”, “Dus Minute Barish Mein,” Anton Chekov.
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Dr. Ayesha Irfan is Associate Professor at Dyal Singh College, (Day), University of Delhi, New Delhi. She has participated in a number of national and international conferences. She presented a paper and chaired a session at the 20th Triennial Conference of ACLALS on “Transcultural Englishes in a Multipolar World,” held at the University of Nairobi, Kenya in July 2025. She has been published widely in prominent journals and contributed papers to significant books. She translates Urdu and Hindi. She has translated prominent Urdu writers like Qurratulain Hyder and Masud Hasan Rizvi Adeeb. Her translations have appeared in prominent journals like Indian Literature, Sahitya Academy, JSL, JNU and Urdu Studies. Her area of specialisation is African-American literature, and she has published and presented several papers in this area. She has edited a collection of essays on Toni Morrison’s Beloved, that was published by Asia Book Club, it is titled Beloved: A Readers Companion.
Email: ayesha_dsc@yahoo.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-8389-0850
Embers of Social Revolution in Rajinder Singh Bedi’s Short-Stories © 2025 by Ayesha Irfan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
