Surjit Patar

Punjab's most loved modern poet — words written in air, a tree that speaks. Surjit Patar (1945–2024), born Surjit Hunjan on 14 January 1945 at Pattar Kalan, a village in Jalandhar district of Punjab, was the most loved Punjabi poet of his generation — a professor, translator and singer of verse whose short musical lines carried the pains of Punjab to readers far beyond it. He took his pen name from his village. His father worked in Kenya, coming home only for brief visits once in five years, and the ache of that distance runs through his poetry of migration and parting. He studied at Randhir College, Kapurthala, took his master's degree in Punjabi from Punjabi University, Patiala, and earned his doctorate on folklore in the hymns of Guru Nanak from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar. He taught Punjabi at Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, for over three decades, retiring as professor. He began writing poetry in the mid-1960s and was first published in the anthology Collage in 1973. His first collection, Hawa Vich Likhe Harf (Words Written in the Air, 1979), held fifty-one ghazals — he called his verse ghazal-like rather than ghazal, written in the old Urdu metre but carrying Punjabi speech, trees, fields and parted families. Five more collections followed, among them Birkh Arz Kare (Thus Spake the Tree), Hanere Vich Sulagdi Varnmala (Words Smouldering in the Dark, 1992), Lafzan Di Dargah (Shrine of Words, 1999), Patjhar Di Pazeb (Anklet of Autumn) and Surzameen (Music Land). He translated Lorca's three tragedies, Girish Karnad's Nagmandala and poems of Brecht and Neruda into Punjabi, adapted plays of Euripides, Racine and Giraudoux, wrote dialogues for Punjabi films, and made television scripts on Punjabi poets from Sheikh Farid to Shiv Kumar Batalvi. His honours included the Punjab Sahitya Akademi Award (1979), the Sahitya Akademi Award (1993), the Saraswati Samman (2009) and the Padma Shri (2012); he led the Punjabi Sahit Akademi, Ludhiana, and the Punjab Arts Council, Chandigarh. In 2015 he returned his Sahitya Akademi Award in protest against growing intolerance. He died of cardiac arrest at his home in Ludhiana on 11 May 2024, aged seventy-nine; his last rites were held with state honours.