The Hindu : New Delhi News : Tribute to a ‘firebrand author’

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Monday, Dec 29, 2008
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New Delhi

Tribute to a ‘firebrand author’

Staff Reporter

Sheila Dikshit inaugurates Dineshnandini Dalmia Chowk on Tilak Marg

– Photo: R. V. Moorthy

New beginning: Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit and Madhya Pradesh Governor Balram Jakhar at the inauguration of Dineshnandini Dalmia Chowk in New Delhi on Sunday.

NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit inaugurated the Dineshnandini Dalmia Chowk at W-Point in Tilak Marg on Sunday.

While expressing great satisfaction over the naming of the Chowk after Dineshnandini Dalmia, she said it was a tribute to the woman whose personal and literary journey portrayed a bold departure from the prevailing trends of her time. Her life story has a fictional aura to it, which reflects all through her literary works, she added.

Madhya Pradesh Governor Balram Jakhar and Rajya Sabha member Janardan Dwivedi were also present.

Born in Udaipur, Dineshnandini started writing at the age of 13. She married Ram Krishna Dalmia, a top industrial mogul of the country at that time. In her early years, when her poem Niraash Aasha was published, it drew the attention of the then veterans Subhadra Kumari Chauhan and Mahadevi Verma. Her first book Shabnam made a deep impact and she was honoured with the “Sakseria Award”. Several successful volumes of prose poems later, she ventured into the domain of poetry, short stories and novel writing and was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 2006.

Ms. Dikshit said that Dineshnandini’s sensitivity to a woman’s predicament and her deep insight into the inner and outer worlds of women in Indian society give her an unrivalled position in Hindi literature. Author of more than 35 novels and an equal number of poetical works, she lived and wrote through successive generations, managing to keep her idiom alive to the contemporary in Hindi literature.

Dineshnandini had the distinction of being Rajashtan’s first post-graduate woman. She rebelled against the purdah system in the country and fought against gender bias, be it in education or in the way she wanted to live her life. She always followed her heart and did what her conscience dictated and tradition forbade. A firebrand author, she was the quintessential feminist of her times. Her books also talk about her personal journey: tortuous but full of adventure, where she walked down a path considered taboo for the women of her times, said Ms. Dikshit.

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