Pebbles in a Tin Drum - An Autobiography

by Ajeet Cour

Autobiography of 20th century woman Panjabi author.

190 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1998

About the author

Ajeet Cour (born 1934) is a Punjabi Indian writer. She has written novels and short stories in the Punjabi language on social-realist themes such as the experience of women in relationships and their position in society. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1985 and the civilian honour of Padma Shri in 2006.

Ajeet Cour was born in the family of S. Makhan Singh in 1934 in Lahore. She had her early education there. After the partition, her family came to Delhi, where she earned an M.A. (Economics).

(Taken from author's wiki profile)

Reviews

[Khush · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an honest book. I trust Ajeet's voice right from the page one. It is a story of a courageous woman who fought the odds and succeeded on her own terms. She did it all rather brilliantly.

Her marriage was not a success. Consequently, She left her husband. She worked as a high school teacher in Delhi where she did most of the work and yet she had to battle the bad politics of her school. At this time, she was also writing in Punjabi, and her work was admired and well received in punjabi literary circles. The education department was not happy with her. As a government employee, she was not supposed to be working in any other capacity. This was an ironic, rather callous, restriction to impose on a writer. Many people in governments jobs in India do all kinds of side businesses. Teachers, in particular, are notorious for this. However, it was so annoying to learn that a teacher was discouraged from pursuing writing.

She tried to straddle her teaching job and her writing career, but things went really bad for her at school. Finally, she left teaching and committed herself full-time to writing. A few years later, she would learn what a great decision she had made. The literary world not only accepted but welcomed her.

Since she wrote in Punjabi, her writings are largely known in Punjab; it has a select readership. But, at last, she wrote a book in English– Pebbles in a Tin Drum. It created ripples in the mainstream English media. Suddenly, her readership widened and she gained more popularity. Her works in Punjabi were translated by other eminent writers like Khushwant Singh.

It was not an easy life for a single woman with two daughters to deal with the world. It is even tougher if the woman happens to be in North India. There were setbacks, but there were also glorious moments that came her way; such as her literary success and her ability to buy a house for herself in posh South Delhi. Her daughters, too, like their mother, were drawn to artistic fields. Whereas one of them attained success as an artist, the other daughter, unfortunately, died of severe burns in Paris hotel fire. Cour gives a chilling description of her loss..

Apart from this sometimes-tragic, sometimes-happy, and in-between mundane life, Ajeet wrote about her lover who was already married. Only this dimension of the autobiography is actually enough to write a whole book. She described her relationship and how she had felt about that episode of her life in a poignant and heart-wrenching manner.