Hindi writer Kusum Ansal, who has written more than 25 novels, short story collections and poetry collections, blames the education system in India for the total neglect of Hindi language and literature.
“Hindi is decaying and I feel sorry as it is not being read and enjoyed by the new generation, who are just taught in English and talk in English at home and school,” said Dr Ansal, who was in London for a Hindi Sammelan, organised by the Indian high commission. She recited a short story and some poems at the gathering.
“I think because of the television and because of cinema Hindi is alive, but that is also become a mixture language — with half the sentences written in Hindi and half in English,” Dr Ansal, who has a doctorate in Hindi literature, said.
Having written a film and a few television series for Doordarshan, Dr Ansal gives both cinema and television credit for keeping Hindi popular. However, having written series like Titliyan, a series ahead of its time by decades, Nadira Babbar-directed Isi Bahane and children’s series called Indradanush, Dr Ansal is not very keen to write for television now. “It is a totally different medium now,” she said, adding when she worked in television, Doordarshan was the only channel and Hum Log and Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi were the only two series on air.
Dr Ansal’s novel Ek Aur Panchavati was adapted into a film by Basu Bhattacharya into a film starring Deepti Naval and Akbar Khan in 1986 and she wrote the dialogues and screenplay for the film. She is ready to let a director adapt her novels into films, but wants them to keep to the spirit of her writing.
She said that she got an offer for her novel, The Widow of Vrindavan, but the subject is very dark and she cannot let her books be changed just to get them made into a film.
“I cannot write comedy, which seems to be the most popular subject these days,” Dr Ansal said, adding that even theatre giant like Faisal Alkazi, who had earlier adapted two play from her work, asked her to write a humorous play.
Dr Ansal, who started writing in college, actually became serious about her writing after marriage and having three children. She started writing after acting in a play on Ghalib she got roped into after a friend dropped out at the last minute.
At ease in writing in Hindi, English and Punjabi, Dr Ansal is now publishing her latest novel, written in English, about the Indian diaspora in South Africa. “I wanted to tell their story and English was the best medium for that,” she said and added that she has also rewritten her novel in Hindi and both will be published in autumn this year. “It is not tough for me to write in either Hindi or English,” she said, having already written two travelogues and a poetry collection in English.