Dear Friends,

I have some news to share. Amazon Editors have picked PANJAB: Journeys Through Fault Lines as one of their top 25 non-fiction books for February 2020. Marked in red.

For link, click here …

Dear Friends,

I am placing this text here because to me the website serves as an archive of responses to my books and my own writings. On February 5th I heard from Mr Jean-Baptiste Joly on PANJAB.

A bit of the background: In the summer of 2015 when I was conceiving the book project as a Fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, I spoke to Mr Joly who was the Director at the institute. I said I foresee many many issues, especially of narrative integrity. He had said: ‘Treat the book like a mission, not religious, but for generations to come to know Panjab. Make the work bigger, much bigger than yourself.’ I kept that in mind, often remembered it when it drove me to depression.

After reading the book, Mr Joly responded:

Dear Aman,

my last email was sent a while ago, so I reconnect today with you after having been navigating through your Panjab. What an adventure, not only for you, but also for the reader!

Even though I was missing many technical words, acronyms, historical knowledge and Indian expressions I got a clear feeling of what Panjab means, where it is coming from, what the pending problems and contradictions are and what a possible (not really positive) future might be. Beside the information itself I admire most the tremendous work and dedication of the author (you!), your engagement, your sincerity and your desire to embrace (sometimes with Lakshmi!) this whole, enormous, complex topic. And you succeeded in this! What an incredible obstinacy you needed to achieve this project and also an unshakable believing in your mission and in yourself!

You found an extraordinary balance between the necessary distance to the object of your observation (like an historian), your own subjective involvement (through your family history) and your empathy and love for the people you met during theses years. Only an authentic writer can combine these different elements in a genuine literary text that makes the reading enormously enjoyable, even for a foreign reader.

So, my dear Aman, congratulations for this great work and book,

and much love to both of you

Jean-Baptiste

—

I feel so validated. I replied:

Dear Mr Joly,

yesterday was my birthday. When Lakshmi wished me at night, I said, ‘I do not know what is there to wish. So many years of our lives have gone by. Yet, today the world is an even more batterted place than in our childhood.’ We held silence for a minute. Perhaps making a wish for the world to somehow, miraculously, turn over a new leaf.

Today I received your beautiful email. I read it thrice and by the third time I was crying. I was alone at home. I cried shamelessly. My tears are a testimony to the promise I made myself when I was in wonderful Solitude. I promised I will remain worthy for what what the residency gave me, what you offered as guidance. Today, I can say, I lived up to my own promise to you. Thank you so very much for your kind words. I know I deserve them.

Yes, Mr Joly, the travels for this work were indeed arduous, not only physically but emotionally, mentally and psychologically. The travels took a lot from me, but gave me so much more. As you say, I remained ‘obstinate’. I am glad this book came together and is now accepted by the various factions of Panjab – the Left, the Radicals, the Hindu voice. It is serving as what was intended: a biography of a state, a region, a people.

I will now strive to complete the novel I started composing at Solitude. One draft was done when I was in residency. At some point, perhaps through DAAD or any other such Fellowship, I will come to Berlin and I will meet you. I see it possible.

Lots of love to you and family. From both of us.
Aman

Dear Friends,

last evening, I made a post on social media on how I feel returning from Bhubaneshwar/Odisha after attending the SOA Literary Festival.

I am thankful to The Samikhsya and Kedar Mishra for carrying my yesterday’s post on my experience. Odisha continues to shower its love upon me. Grateful!

Bahut Bahut Dhonyobaad!

Please read more here …

Dear Friends,

On February 1st evening, I was gratified upon gifting my new book PANJAB to Mr Aurobinda Behera, retd Chief Secretary, Odisha.

When Roll of Honour released at my friend Sujit Mahapatra’s Bakul library in Bhubaneshwar in 2012, Mr Behera had walked up to me to ask if my parents had lived in Rourkela. Then he told me, in 1984, he was ADM Rourkela. At noon on 31st October, upon noticing vulgar graffiti and sloganeering, he had decided to shift the Sikhs to the Gurdwara. Police vehicles were deployed for the task. Hundreds of families were evacuated.

That is how my parents and thousands of Sikhs were saved. I do not wish such circumstances on anyone. But by simply following protocol, by doing the right thing, doing what a civil servant would do, Mr Behera became my hero. In the past few years Mr Behera has called me from time to time asking me about the progress of PANJAB.

I am forever obliged. Salute!

Dear Friends,

these days we know The Telegraph for it’s excellent headlines, but here is something more: a review of PANJAB.

‘Magnum Opus’, says the paper.

Please read more here …

Dear Friends,

last evening I saw a documentary film, Landless by my friend and guide Randeep Maddoke. It is truly an eye-opener but I was disappointed to note it is not being screened in Panjab.

I wrote an appeal to Panjab which Punjab Today has very kindly accepted to publish.

‘Being ignored is the worst fate an artist can face. That the artist’s work is not acknowledged at all is worse than even being censored or boycotted. In censor and boycott, at least the artist’s work is acknowledged. When ignored, the artist is consigned to the dungeons of pubic space without even a hearing. It is erasure of the artist, it is death.’

Please read here…

Dear Friends,

PANJAB is a gift that keeps giving. Thank you Aneet Randhawa for this lovely review in The Tribune. Thank you Roopinder Singh.

‘Punjab emerges as a land of paradoxes.’

Please read here …

Dear Friends,

my friend Hema Gopinathan has assessed my book Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines in the context of my earlier works Sepia Leaves and Roll of Honour.

—

It is interesting to me, as a friend of the author, that Amandeep Sandhu’s latest book is a non-fictional account of the whys of Panjab. His earlier works were autobiographical fiction of his childhood through the lens of mental health and his formative years as a student in a boarding school during the violent insurgency days.

This one, Panjab – Journeys Through Fault Lines, though seemingly a travelogue/ reportage of the ground reality of Panjab, feels like the third part of a trilogy of self-examination as the canvas broadens and the author goes deeper within himself. While the earlier two dug deep into the private, personal surface, it is only logical that the author would not find the encompassing truth in the inner landscape of memories and would have to make the journey to the outer, the land of his foremothers and forefathers.

The book begins with the haunting line, ‘If you want to understand Punjab, be ready to count it’s corpses’. A few millenia ago another man, Vikramaditya went looking to retrieve a corpse, but that was only possible once he answered the corpse’s twenty-four questions. Our wholeness is dependent on the acceptance and integration of all our parts, not just the good but also the dead, decaying bits.

Panjab… examines 16, Satt, Berukhi, Rosh, Rog, Astha, Mardangi, Dawa, Paani, Zameen, Karza, Jaat, Patit, Bardr, Sikhya, Lashaan, Janamdin. The solah anna that make up the kadwa sach of Panjab today.

It’s a searing often disturbing narrative, the author keen on neither sparing himself nor us the readers as he dissects the complex 16 layered wound, each exposing the next.

There is something to be said about the clear dispassionate eye of the critic, standing tall, giving us a sweeping view of all that they think is wrong with the system and how to fix it. The way the British ran a sharp knife right across body of Punjab with the cool eye of a surgeon, in what they thought was the least painful way to bisect a nation, a people.

But this is not that book, for Amandeep is not that writer. While he writes with the clarity of the outsider, he also writes with the longing of a long-lost son returning home to embrace his slightly dented, damaged mother. It is in many ways more a pilgrimage than a travelogue.

The rips and tears across fabric of Punjab match the ones that were etched on his soul by the inter-generational trauma of his ancestors and you watch as he carefully examines and matches the two seams hoping to find answers that would if not heal, provide a voice for himself and a people whose suffering has been ignored from time immemorial.

Dear friends,

I am mighty pleased that the main newspaper of my adopted city Deccan Herald has reviewed Panjab: Journeys Through Fault Lines. A few weeks ago, when the book released, the owner of my favourite bookshop, Mr Venkatesh of Nagasri told me, ‘We will be able to sell the once a review appears in the Deccan Herald.’

I am so glad the review has appeared today, the first Sunday of the year. ‘The outcome (book) is a unique account of contemporary Punjab with a historical backdrop… It adds to our knowledge of Punjab with a wealth of well-researched data peppered with anecdotes.’

Please read more here …