Mohan Rakesh
By Dr. Disha Sharma
• Madan Mohan Guglani (1925-72), better known by his
pseudonym Mohan Rakesh was one of the prominent writers
of Hindi Literature in the 1950s. He was born in Amritsar. He
made a significant contribution to novel, short story, memoirs
and drama writing. His stories primarily revolve around man-
woman relationship.
• Mohan Rakesh was actively associated with literary and
cultural activities. Literary discourses at his place among his
father’s friends shaped his taste.
• Strict atmosphere in the family
• Mohan Rakesh, the writer never got rid of his past
experiences. He lived a life of penury and saw creditors
knocking at his father’s door.
• He says: “The greatest personality that I am introduced to in
this life till date is my mother.”
• He was greatly affected by two incidents that took place in 1947- the division
of India and the death of his sister.
• The first uprooted him and threw him out of his environment and soil and the
second made this consciousness of uprootedness very deep in him. He was at
Lahore where he witnessed and lived the trauma of partition.
• He was uprooted from Lahore and kept wandering for the next ten years in
search of permanent place from Jodhpur to Bombay, from Jalandhar to
Shimla and finally to Delhi. He lived there in a rented house that he kept
changing.
• It was so difficult for him to remain at one place with the same wife for a
long time.
• He married three times. The first two marriages were legal while the third
can be called gandharb marriage.
• Rakesh had his early education at Amritsar and then higher education at
Lahore. He got the degree of Shastri and did M.A. in Sanskrit from Oriental
College, Lahore. After partition, he came to Jalandhar and settled over there.
He passed M.A. in Hindi with first division.
• He lived the life of a wanderer looking for a suitable job. He spent months
after months in hunger and misery spending his nights at pavements.
• One more dimension of Rakesh’s literary journey is his translation.
• He translated Kalidasa’s Abigyan Shakuntalam into ‘Shakuntal’
and Shudrak’s Mricchakatika into Hindi under the same title.
• Interestingly he translated three English novels into Hindi. He
translated Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady into Ek Aurat Ka
Chehara, Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair into Usa Raat
Ke Bad and Edita Morris’ Flowers of Hiroshima into Hiroshima
Ke Phool.
• It shows not only his extensive reading, scholarship and the
command on English language but also his expertise in the art of
translation.
• His story “Uski Roti” (One’s Bread) was made into an eponymous
film by Mani Kaul in 1971, for which he also wrote the dialogue.
In July 1971, he received the Jawarharlal Nehru Fellowship for
research on ‘The Dramatic Word’, however he could not complete
it and died in December, 1972 at the age of 47.
Synopsis
• Halfway House (1969) by Mohan Rakesh is a play
about search for meaning and identity. The play is
primarily abount Savitri who is convinced that she
deserves better in life. Failed to get happiness in her
married life, Savitri seeks marital happiness beyond
conjugal relations.
• Mohan Rakesh’s Adhe Adhure is translated into English
by Bindu Batra under the title, Halfway House. Play is
entirely written in dialogic form in which the story,
dilemmas, conflict and the angry mood of characters is
expressed through dialogues.
• It highlights the predicament of a single-unit family in
an urban setting.
• The play revolves around Savitri, the main protagonist of the
play, who is a modern homemaker as well as the
breadwinner of her family. She is married to Mahendranath,
who is a failed entrepreneur.
• Savitri, who is educated enough, takes up a job and becomes
the financial controller of the household. The job brings her
into contact with men who are dynamic, smart and rich. She
starts finding faults with her un employed husband
Mahendra who in the state of extreme depression fails to
gratify even the biological urge of his wife.
• Savitri’s attitude towards her husband also has adverse effect
on their children- son Ashok, who is unemployed; and two
daughters – Binni, who elopes to marry, but has returned;
and Kinni, the rebellious teenager who frequently tries to get
the attention that she constantly craves for.
• Savitri is frustrated that her life has not shaped in the
manner that she had envisaged two decades ago when she
was young and just starting up with Mahendranath.
• As the play unravels, the audience learns of the many
desperate attempts Savitri makes to change her
circumstances, seeking relationships with successful men.
• Despite her desperation, and the abuse she suffers from
her husband, she continues to labour hard to keep the
family from drowning in penury. It is a sacrifice that she
makes without having a choice, and she is clearly
unhappy about it. Unfortunately, all her attempts to
change her life prove futile. The play ends with both
Savirti and Mahendranath returning home, perhaps
realizing that they don’t have anyone else but each other.