Bhisham Sahni's autobiography 'Today's Past' in English

How many movements and campaigns does it take to build and nurture a peoples' identity, their culture and politics? Many, and Bhisham Sahni was a part of it all, including the struggle for freedom and the fight against ignorance and entrenched biases, his memoirs an inspiring testimony to a life lived at the intersection of progressive currents.
Writer, actor, activist, theatre person, freedom fighter and Padma Bhushan awardee Sahni in 'Today's Pasts' (Penguin, 2015) does not burrow vertically back down the tunnel of time but, as the title of the work suggests, makes the time that has been resonate deeply in the time that is now.

Originally in Hindi, the book has been rendered into English by Snehal Shingavi, assistant professor of English at University of Texas, Austin, who maintains a light touch in the translation even as the author gives the narrative a gentle, flowing pace.
An icon of progressive Indian theatre and a giant of Hindi letters, the pages of Sahni's autobiography resonate with his ardent passion for the arts, given as he was to going to great lengths for the sake of pursuing it, surrounded by others like him who were driven by the energy of modernity that had captured the imagination of educated Indian youth in the early days of independence.

Bhisham Sahni, whose novel 'Tamas' won the Sahitya Akademi
award in 1975, wore many hats. He tells us that he dabbled in business, teaching and publishing, wanted nothing more than to play hockey for his college at one time and, as a translator, spent seven years in the erstwhile USSR translating books from the Russian into Hindi and, in the process, also getting a collection of short stories he had written published in Russian translation.

He also found time in his busy career to essay the role of the eponymous plaintiff in the cult Saeed Akhtar Mirza film, 'Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho!'.

But it is unmistakable from his memoir that it was foremost as a writer that Bhisham Sahni saw himself. He was deeply immersed in the Hindi literary world and devotes space in his autobiography to discussing the currents and trends such as Nayi Kahani (New Story), Sachetan Kahani (Sensitive Story), Samsaamayak Kahani (Contemporary Story) etc., that had at the time filled the horizon of Hindi literature.
He discusses these various movements without any prejudice and with the respectful warmth reserved for fellow travellers with whom one may not agree but who nonetheless are regarded foremost as steadfast companions in pursuit of the same objective.

The author says that although he would write stories that would fit into one bracket or another, and that all stories automatically conform to some style or movement or school of thought, it does not pay to rigidly adhere to any doctrine or framework in writing.
Bhisham Sahni says that he is for honest articulation, for giving full play to one's imagination with courage and confidence.
From his account of a life that began in 1915 in Rawalpindi in present-day Pakistan, and ended in 2003 in Delhi, it is clear that the author in his life had aimed for nothing else.