Book Review: The Watchmaker by Nanak Singh

The novel "The Watchmaker" was originally written in Punjabi by Nanak Singh in the 1940's, who is widely acclaimed as the father of the Punjabi novel. It was translated into English by Navdeep Singh Suri, a career Indian diplomat and press counsellor at the Indian High Commission, the grandson of Nanak Singh himself. The original novel immediately became immensely popular and won him literary acclaim. It was adopted into a successful motion picture ¨Pavitra Paapi¨ by Balraj Sahni. Nanak Singh is perhaps the first Punjabi writer who shook the foundations of the British Empire with his powerful pen. Its not a widely renowned fact that he was a great Gandhian and that he took active part in the freedom struggle and the Akali Movement. In fact, Gandhian idealism pervades his fiction.

The masterfully written novel, and at least as much skillfully translated, if not more, has been impressing the audiences of the literary world ever since its release. It is set up in 1930's city of Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan). The lead protagonist of the novel, a sinner who can´t be more saintly (the literal meaning of the original title), a young man named Kedar, sets out to find employment after death of his mother. Little did he knew, the employer had replaced him for another person, a father of four, Panna Lal. That day Panna Lal had come with hopes of getting a loan from the Sardar, the employer, for marriage of his eldest daughter. But that he even lost his employment and now in no way in heaven or earth he could feed his family again and save his pride, he lost all hope and wrote a final letter addressed to Kedar, saying he is going to end his life for what He has done to him and his family, and cursed him.

The letter shook Kedar's soul and the kind-hearted man that he was, he couldn´t bear the burden of someone´s death on his shoulders, found the responsibility to take care of Panna Lal´s family on himself. To tell the family, he made up a story about Panna Lal needing urgently to go to Bombay on the work of Sadarji and that he would be back in a few weeks. As he would write letters on behalf on Panna Lal to the family, he would keep a meagre amount of his salary for himself and send the rest along with the letter. In matter of fortnights, he found himself growing closer to the family, especially to the wife Maya, as her son and the eldest daughter Veena, as her brother. The love between him and the family only incremented since Panna Lal didn´t return and Kedar moved onto house next to the one belonging to the family. The well educated man he was, he began giving tuition to Veena twice a day and getting involved in other daily activities of the family. In just a few months, there was no secret of the family hidden from him, he became a part of the family itself. At this time he came to know about Veena´s impending marriage and that they needed a good 1000-1200 rupees to satisfy the in-laws. Kedar promised Maya that he will ask for the loan from Sardarji and that she should proceed to the in-laws for persuading them.

After returning to his home, he found another fire erupting in himself. He was falling for Veena and the thought that he was going to help in her marriage to someone else was disturbing. He found an uncontrollable desire to express his feelings to Veena. On the fateful night, he sinned by going to Veena when Maya was not in the home and told  her he felt a ¨different¨ type of love for her than a ¨brother´s¨ love, as she felt. This event drastically changed the life of both of them. The next day, Veena was not able to believe what she has agreed upon and Kedar on the other hand was feeling guilty of what he had done and resolved to never let something like that happen again. In the meantime, the fact that Veena's in-laws agreed to the proposal had left Kedar unhappy. He went missing for four days and during the time Veena kept wondering if he had killed himself. She prayed for his return just once and that she would be happy even to be his wife if not his sister.

Contrary to everyone´s expectations, he returned with eight hundred rupees for the marriage, saying that Sardarji has lent them the money. This showed that he was a good Samaritan, as he had got the money from selling in ancestral house. But the chain of events led Veena to finding it difficult to stay away from him, as a sister or a wife, and the fact that Kedar avoided her to control his feelings and wouldn´t even talk to her made her frail and disliking even her marriage and the bridegroom she had longed for. She started getting paler and weaker by the day.

That he led his own love out of his hands, even while knowing that it was the right thing to do, he was finding it difficult to stay there and excused to Maya that the doctor wanted him to have a change of his surroundings. As if the one burden of a daughter´s marriage was long over, a lender came up to Maya and made her aware of the loan of 2500 rupees her husband had taken from him and that if unpaid, the matter would be brought to court, and they would have to sell their home and Kedar knew that with that, every shred of respect they had in the society would be gone. So he took the responsibility on himself and paid 1500 of its rupees from Sardarji´s money, which was to deposited in a bank and rest 1000 will be paid by mortgage of their house.

When Sardarji came looking for Kedar, he met Maya and all secrets of Kedar were exposed, that he´d been lying all along about Panna Lal and that sardarji had fired him six months ago. Clouds of doubt circled in head of Maya that why he´d lie to them even while someone else´s son helped them so much that someone´s own son fails to do for his family.

On returning to his house, Sardarji found Kedar´s letter of apology and that he spent 1500 of his rupees for saving someone and that he will return it. The letter touched the heart of Sardarji and he went looking for Kedar, not for money but for the fear of losing such an accomplice. But he was nowhere to be found.

When Veena returned from her in-laws, she and Maya broke in Kedar's house. They found letters of Kedar and the original letter of Panna Lal that was meant for Kedar. Kedar said that he couldn't stay on as he wants to forget their memories and that he will still take care of the family. The family is dejected for losing them both.

Kedar found a business of his own in Amritsar and for months and months lived just on cigarettes and tea (and that too, without  milk) to save as much as he could to send to the family. He paid almost the whole loan apart from meeting needs of the family and freeing their house.

This is when an elderly man came to his shop and introduced himself as Panna Lal; that he was unable to kill himself and how grateful he was for taking such good care of his family. When asked about Veena, Kedar came to know that she had died because of him. This shook him head to toe and he declined to return.

The next day, after Panna Lal returned; unable to bear with himself, Kedar went very ill and was not seen at work. When a sardar friend came looking for him, he told the whole story of his life to him and told him why he didn't care for anything except for a way to return back the money. Seeing his end near, Kedar asked the sardar friend to sent a telegram which said to come here as soon as they can. Kedar passed away in the night.

According to the prologue, the sardar friend of Kedar was Nanak Singh and in his memory, after 10 years he is writing that story in the form of a novel.

The novel has been one of the best I have ever read and I found it hard to let go of it once it is started. The way in which the story progresses is unconventional and the image of the characters has been generated is impeccable. The translation was extremely good and more often than not the translator goes out of the box to explain what the text in mother language meant, instead of just word-to-word language conversion; and that is an appreciable part.