Shortlisted for the 2026 VoW Book Award for translation from Punjabi to English, this fascinating book , first published as ‘Neela Ghumiar’ in 2013 captures the pen portraits of seventeen iconic poets, potters, politicians, publishers, thespians and conmen who formed the centre of Delhi’s Punjabi cultural life ,without necessarily being Punjabis by birth .
Ajeet Cour who won the Sahitya Akademi award for her two part autobiographical works – Khanabadosh (The Vagabond ) and Koora Kabara (Garbage )witnessed the trauma of Partition . She cannot ,and does not extricate herself from the pain and anguish which is captured in the iconic verse of lament in which Amrita Pritam involves Waris Shah to look at the blood soaked Chenab which witnessed the mayhem and bloodshed in the city of Lahore .
The first entry in this selection is on the versatile genius of Khushwant Singh- whose oeuvre includes the academic treatise ‘The Sikhs ‘ as well as the award winning ‘Train to Pakistan’ and the compilation of his irreverent column ‘With Malice towards one and All’. His unwavering faith and support for Indira Gandhi and her son , Sanjay is rudely shaken at the time of Operation Blue Star, and he returned his Padma Bhushan in protest. However , he always remained a very strong critic of Bhindranwale and the Khalistan movement .
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Next is the biographic sketch of Gurcharan Singh, ‘ The Blue Potter’ :the father of modern Indian studio pottery on whom this book is named . His life and work has been captured so beautifully in the short documentary ‘The Swan and the Lotus’, which I had the pleasure of viewing at the IIC.
Amrita Pritam was The Exalted Empress ( of words). Her father had been Ajeet’s Gurumukhi tutor, and our author holds her in the highest esteem. Even as she gives her abundant credit for her voice, her wit, her poetry and for breaking the set norms of patriarchy , not she does agree with her fawning admiration for everything that Mrs Gandhi did, including the Emergency. This, as well as her running feud with Krishna Sobti, over the Zindaginama – as a proprietary title – do cast a shadow over her ‘ethical integrity’, but when it comes to her writing and her ability to captivate the audience with her voice , she was indeed the Empress . I was privileged to hear her acceptance speech for the Gyanpith Award in the year 1982 , when I was then a rookie trainee journalist with the Economic Times . She and the Empress of Chenab – Krishna Sobti –were bitter enemies : they both won the Sahitya Akademi and the Gyanpith awards . Both were great friends of Ajeet, who often had a tough time in maintaining this balance – for this was a small charmed circle where everyone knew everyone else , and were quick to take offence !
Balwant Gargi has been called The Magician of Words – and yes, there were few like him who had such a command over the language .I had the occasion of meeting him with another thespian Mohan Maharishi – who produced Einstein , and I have a copy of his book The Naked Triangle. His bohemian lifestyle was entirely at odds with what a conventional Punjabi Bania was like .
Then we have the publishing doyen of Punjabi Bhapa Pritam Singh, who started his career as a Granthi at a Gurudwara of the Namdhari sect. After learning typesetting at the Guru Khalsa press in Amritsar, he shifted to Delhi, and established the most succesful publishing enterprise , and published all the top names of Punjabi literature. However , the commercial success of his printing press came from printing platform tickets for the railways for the first few years after Independence ; and then there was no looking back.
The first six entries are comparatively longer – the next eleven are shorter . She talks of Prime Minister VP Singh as ‘Raja or Faquir’. But her association with him started only after he had demitted office after implementing the Mandal Commission recommendations , and changing Indian polity forever .Jagjit Singh was great at singing ghazals, and like Ajeet , was fond of Shiv Batalvi ,but Cour bore a personal grudge against him for his deeds did not match his words. Shiv Batalvi, the King of Anguish gave Punjabi poetry and writing an entirely new vocabulary and idiom. Batalvi won the Sahitya Akademi award at 31 ,for his ‘Loona’- the radical reinterpretation of a young woman trapped in the intersection of caste and patriarchy. But he died young due to excessive drinking , and (perhaps) unrequited , one sided love .
An exceptional bureaucrat MS Randhawa , whose imprint can be seen in the City Beautiful also features in her list of prominent Punjabis who shaped Delhi and Punjab in the first two decades of Independence . Not only did he encourage theatre and arts, he supported innovative publishing ventures like an outreach for farmers ‘Nawan Pind’ ( New Village ), a museum devoted to Sikh history as well as the iconic Rose Garden of Chandigarh
KS Duggal was the legendary broadcaster and founder station Director of AIR Jalandhar. Budding authors can take a cue from his writing regime – work in the study from 4 am to 12 noon , with tea and breakfast served there itself , and away from newspapers and the phone !He too was distressed by Operation Blue Star, and complained to the AIR that the news of tanks breaching the sanctity of Golden temple was being announced as an army victory over enemy territory. This is one permanent scar that will indeed take a long , long time to heal.
Kulwant Singh Virk, whom she calls the Waris Shah of short stories had a writing style which she calls Virkai . He too writes about partition , but in his narrative, ‘Khabbal’, he includes , not just the human beings , but even their cattle . ‘ Everything in Pakistan seems displaced, even the animals that have been left behind in abandoned homes , looking around with their forlorn eyes , and stepping cautiously in unfamiliar places ‘
Then we have the story of Devendra Satyarthi who is fascinated with Ram Kinkar, the Shanti Niketan sculptor who designed the Yakhsha and Yakshini statues that guard the New Delhi office of the RBI. His famous travelogue to Sri Lanka ‘ Lanka Desh Hai Colombo’ shows how the past and present can be woven in the tapestry of the contemporary. Rajendra Singh Bedi was considered both a Punjabi and Urdu writer , and his classic Ek Chadar Maili Si, was one of the first books I read just when I entered college . It still leaves a lasting impression on me .
The one person I was not aware of before I read this book was the ‘artist-yogi-poet’ Sohan Qadri .Born Sohan Singh, he adopted the Qadri title on account of the shrine in his village , he had settled in Copenhagen where he devoted his life to art and Yoga . He delved into Haiku, and published poems Antar Jyoti ( inner light) and Antat Jhati ( introspection ).But while Qadri was a dervish in the real sense , the penultimate entry in the book is about the conman ,Yogi Bhajan – who picked up Yogic postures from the equally controversial Dhirendra Brahamachari, moved to Canada, and set up a cult following . Yes, he had perfected the physical postures, and leveraged them to claim a metaphysical aura . ‘
The last tribute is to the nightingale of Jammu-Padma Sachdev, who was called the Dogri ‘Habba Khatoon’ by the then CM Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed . She too received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1971 for her collection of poems ‘Meri Kavita, Mere Geet’. . Although fluent in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, she chose to write in her mother tongue Dogri, and revive interest in the language which even the Dogra kings had ignored during their ten decade rule from 1846 to 1947.
In fine , the Blue Potter is a kaleidoscope of the world of Ajeet Cour . Punjab here is less a territory than a cultural orbit, centred on the drawing rooms and auditoriums of Delhi. This is the best of Punjabiyat that needs to be resurrected – it has received several knocks – 1947, 1984 , the outmigration to Canada and now the menace of drugs – but after reading the Blue Potter , one is convinced that all is not lost . The geography of Punjab may have shrunk, but the cultural sphere transcends her borders.
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