UC Davis

This project is a study of Hindi nayi kahani (New Story) writers’ diagnosis of modernity and middle-class experience in 1970. I present an in-depth analysis of interviews, published in Hindi little magazine Sarika, of four stalwarts of the movement: Mannu Bhandari, Rajendra Yadav, Bhisham Sahni, and Nirmal Verma. I contend that Deleuze’s metaphor “writers are physicians” applies to these writers as they point out significant symptoms of “skin-deep modernity,” as Bhandari puts it. Further, I analyze Mannu Bhandari’s novel Apka Bunty (Your Bunty), published in 1971, to suggest that these symptoms are embodied in the child protagonist Bunty who navigates his relationship with his divorced parents and the world at large. I propose that this character is best understood as a swiveling protagonist who is incapable of causing any significant change to his environment and is rendered an utterly passive figure by surrounding forces. In this way, he is a symbol of the modern citizen whom the writers diagnose as eternally insecure, fearful, and lonely.