Kya Bhoolun Kya Yaad Karun by Harivansh Rai Bachhan

Autobiography of Harivansh Rai Bachhan is in four volumes. This one is the first in that series and talks about approximately first 28 years of his life. This is a difficult book to review, one because it is an autobiography, second because it comes from an era, which you do not relate to and third because the author has described the era and his life in so many layers and dimensions that even after completing the book, you are still discovering the layers and meanings of what he says.

He starts by tracing his family lineage from some 500 years before he was born, and then goes on describe the characteristics of Kayastha, the community that he belongs to. I often used to wonder about the surname Bachhan, as to where it came from, because have not heard it anywhere in and around Allahabad also. And the revelation came from this book, Bachhan was the pet name of Harivansh Rai, and instead of Srivastava which was his original family name, he used Bachhan both as his surname and his pen name. He talks about the family tree in great detail, the circumstances of a lower middle class family in that era and how most people lived hand to mouth. How the families operated, how some people always became the victims of family politics and some people ended up taking responsibility of the extended family.

He talks in great detail about his own evolution as a poet and writer. The people who contributed to his poetry, were his inspirations, or gave him the experiences that could give him poetic insights into life and people. It is interesting to read about three women and a few men who contributed to his poetic evolution, his struggle to remain a poet and not let himself get lost in the struggle for life. He describes his relationships in great detail, and how each of them contributed to his growth.

The honesty and bluntness with which he writes about himself and his family is unbelievable, most of the times you can relate to what he says about people and human behavior. When he is describing his struggle to earn money while making all the efforts to establish himself as a poet, you can clearly make out what distinguishes winners from losers. For all his life, he never slept more than 4 hours a day, he did all kinds of jobs to sustain himself and his family, and also ensured that he nurtured the poet in him everyday. He did not get any royalty for first book, just got a share of copies from the first print. His most famous book ‘Madhushala’, he had to publish himself, since the publisher was playing games with him, while describing all this he also acknowledges that he did not like or enjoy doing anything except writing.

He describes his relationship with his first wife Shyama, very sensitively. How she came into his life, when he was getting over his relationship with another woman, and how she was a teenager, a delicate flower like girl when they got married and how her devotion to him gave him stability in life and how she matured on to become his pillar of strength. This volume actually finishes with the death of Shyama, probably a logical turning point in his life.While he was married he got attracted to another woman, and he can’t pin point what she meant to him, but he would let her use him willingly.