The atmabodh of Nirmal Verma

Nirmal Verma's exceptionalism in the world of Hindi letters has been universally acknowledged. One of the most widely translated and well-known writers overseas, Verma has employed subjects and themes that are unique in Hindi fiction. He writes of the existential dilemmas of individuals wandering across a European landscape, humming Mozart, and reflecting on Heidegger; or of bohemian intellectuals of the Indian capital, suffering inarticulate tensions in relationships while pursuing their avant-garde interests in humid, beer-drenched terraces of Delhi. In some measure, this reflects Verma's personal background. With a Masters in History from the capital's St Stephen's College, that cradle for IAS officers and English novelists, Verma could well have been an English writer.

Indeed, like Bankim Chandra Chatterji or Michael Madhusudan Dutt, who started their careers as English writers and left volumes of correspondence and journals in that language while churning out formative prose works in Bangla, language played a complex role in Verma's intellectual life. Accused for long of being a vilayati writer for the 'foreignness' of his themes and characters, Verma started his literary life by writing poems in English and ended his career as a bitter critic of English and the destructive influence of Western modernity on indigenous wholesomeness.