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Krishna Baldev Vaid
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Krishna Baldev Vaid (Hindi: कृष्ण बलदेव वैद) (27 July 1927 – 6 February 2020) was an Indian Hindi fiction writer and playwright, noted for his experimental and iconoclastic narrative style.

Contents
1 Early life
2 Career
3 Personal life
4 Works
4.1 Novels
4.2 Short-story collections
4.3 Story collections in English translation
4.4 Plays
4.5 Diaries
4.6 Interviews
4.7 Novels in English translation
5 References
6 External links
Early life
Vaid was born in Dinga, in what is now Pakistan. He and his family moved as refugees during the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent, which resulted in the creation of both modern India and Pakistan. Vaid studied at Punjab University and obtained his doctorate from Harvard University.[1] His dissertation on Henry James was published by Harvard University Press in 1964 called: Technique in the Tales of Henry James. [2]

Career
He has taught at Indian universities, and moved to the United States in 1966 to continue his academic career. His literary works have been translated and published in English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Russian, Japanese and several Indian languages.[3] His works include Uska Bachpan (1957) translated into English by Vaid and published as Steps in Darkness, Bimal Urf Jayen to Jayen Kahan translated into English as Bimal in Bog (1974) and Guzara Hua Zamana (1981) translated into English as The Broken Mirror.

Selected short stories in English translation were published as Silence and Other Stories ( Writer's Workshop, 1972),Dying Alone: A novella and Ten Short Stories (Penguin, 1992), and The Sculptor in Exile ( Penguin Books, 2014).

He did the first translation of Samuel Beckett’s plays “Waiting for Godot” and Endgame (play) into Hindi language in 1968.[4]

Personal life
After retirement as Professor of English from State University of New York, Potsdam, in 1985, Vaid lived in India for over two decades, and continued his literary activities. In 2010, he moved back to the United States, where he resided.

He was the father of Urvashi Vaid a well-known U.S. based political activist and Jyotsna Vaid an academic based in the United States. He has another daughter Rachna. Vaid was also the grandfather of the performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon.

Works
Novels
Uska Bachpan .
Bimal Urf Jayen to Jayen Kahan .
Nasreen
Ek Naukrani Ki Diary
Dard La Dava
Doosra Na Koi
Guzara Hua Zamana
Kala Kolaj
Maya Lok
Nar Nari
Short-story collections
Beech ka Darwaza .
Mera Dushman.
Bodhisatva ki Biwi.
Badchalan Biwiyo ka Dweep.
Doosra Kinare Se'
Lapata
Uske Bayan
Vah aur main
Khali Kitab Ka jadoo
Pravas Ganga
Khamoshi
Alap Lila
Pita Ki Parchhaiyan
Mera Dushman: Sampoorn Kahaniyan Part 1
Raat ki Sair: Sampoorn Kahanian Part 2
Story collections in English translation
Silence (Writers Workshop, Calcutta,1972)
The Sculptor in Exile (Penguin Books, 2014—issue in Modern Classics series)
Plays
Bhookh Aag Hai
Hamari Boodhiya
Pariwar Akhada
Savaal aur Swapna
Mona Lisa ki Muskaan
Kehte hain Jisko Payar
Unt ka Ujala
Diaries
Khvab hai Divane ka
Shama har Rang mein
Duboya Mujhko Hone Ne
Jab Aankh Khul Gayee
Interviews
Javab Nahin
Criticism
Shikast Ki Avaaz
Criticism in English
Technique in the Tales of Henry James (Harvard University Press, 1964)
Novels in English translation
Bimal in Bog ( National Publishing House, 1972)
The Diary of a Maidservant (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Dying Alone , novella and ten stories (Penguin Books,1992)
The Broken Mirror (Penguin Books, 1994,2014—issued in Modern Classics series))
Steps in Darkness (Orion Press,1962, Penguin Books, 1995,2014—issued in Modern Classics series)

QUOTED: "One of his abiding strengths (and great subjects) as a writer was separating the hope and the hopelessness of memory."

Krishna Baldev Vaid: Remembering his restless pen
Aditya Mani Jha | Updated on February 15, 2020 Published on February 14, 2020

In pursuit of his passion: Krishna Baldev Vaid was influenced by playwright Samuel Beckett and translated the latter’s plays ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Endgame’ into Hindi - Image courtesy: Penguin random house

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Krishna Baldev Vaid, famous for ‘breaking rules and not winning awards’, was a towering figure in Hindi literature’s modernist movement
One of the strange things about writing in the post-Internet era is that Proustian riffs about memory don’t quite land with the same impact as they used to. How could they, when digital memory has so thoroughly overhauled its human counterpart?

An exception to this was Krishna Baldev Vaid (1927-2020), the New York-based Hindi and English writer who passed away last week. During his long and distinguished career, Vaid wrote 40-odd books, which included 10 novels and over a dozen short story collections in Hindi. Alongside his friend Nirmal Verma, and other writers such as Mannu Bhandari, Kamleshwar and Mohan Rakesh, he was part of Hindi literature’s modernist ‘Nayi Kahani’ movement.

One of his abiding strengths (and great subjects) as a writer was separating the hope and the hopelessness of memory. Consider this passage from The Soul of Darkness, a story from The Sculptor in Exile (2014), where the unnamed protagonist is in “the dungeon cluttered with all sorts of junk” (a metaphor for his memories) and flailing about arbitrarily, looking for something.

“(...) I started prodding the darkness with my cane in a manner that would suggest I was provoking a corpse or a demon or a serpent into life. Soon I was dancing in furious ecstasy in that narrow overcrowded space even as I beat that darkness and that junk I’d saved all my life and forgotten. I made fancy fencing passes with my cane, parodying an imagined master swordsman. For a while nothing happened. Then suddenly an invisible hand snatched my cane and started giving me a thrashing the like of which I never got even in my naughty childhood. (...) I’m lying now in a nursing home, recovering slowly from those blows, experiencing them again and again in my imagination with perverse pleasure.”

In that last line, Vaid delivers a stunning conclusion to the narrator’s abortive memory-flirtations. Why do we keep bringing up age-old aches inside of our heads? As Vaid knew, the answer is, “Because it hurts, and because we convince ourselves that this suffering is somehow more meaningful than a lot of pleasures.”

In the 1974 experimental Hindi novel Bimal Urf Jayen To Jayen Kahan (translated into English later as Bimal in the Bog), several monologues almost scold the reader for taking his claptrap at face value. This wasn’t an unreliable narrator so much as a narrator who could reliably defer his redemption in the reader’s eyes. In any case, Vaid had little patience with the formulaic application of such devices, on the part of both writers and critics. His very first publication was an English-language book, Technique in the Tales of Henry James (1964, Harvard University Press) — essentially his PhD dissertation.

The true objects of his ire were the then-dominant New Critics, who relied on strictly textual micro-analyses, short-selling or ignoring both historical context and individual experience. They were led by the likes of TS Eliot, whose essay Tradition and the Individual Tradition made the sweeping claim that all truly mature poems were impersonal. Vaid’s own stories (or, for that matter, those by Verma or Bhandari), on the other hand, emphasised the primacy of individual experiences. To that end, Vaid was also a wickedly funny diarist — in one of his published memoir-diaries Abr Kya Cheez Hai? Hawaa Kya Hai, there are innumerable casually acidic observations such as: “Safaltaa ka ashleeltam namoona: Amitabh Bachchan (The most obscene example of success — Amitabh Bachchan)”.

According to Vaid himself (in a 2017 interview on the official Penguin blog), he was “not a professional and prolific translator into English or Hindi”. But he did translate Hindi novels by his friends Verma and Shrikant Verma into English; plus the Samuel Beckett plays Waiting for Godot and Endgame into Hindi. Beckett was Vaid’s favourite writer in his youth, embodying the kind of modernity and creative risk-taking he wanted to bring to his own work.

The last decade of his life was an eventful one. In 2010, the Delhi government (under then chief minister Sheila Dikshit) removed his name from the state-sponsored Shalaka Samman awardees’ list — a full year after initially announcing the honour. A Congress politician had objected to certain ‘obscene’ passages from Bimal Urf Jayen to Jayen Kahan, leading to the removal. This was reported widely and it triggered an award-wapsi by many of Vaid’s fellow awardees, including Gagan Gill and Kedarnath Singh.

Then in 2014, a few of Vaid’s translated works (two of them self-translated) were published — the collection The Sculptor in Exile, the novellas None Other (Dusra Na Koi) and Here I Am If I Am , as well as a pair of bildungsromans, Steps in Darkness and Broken Mirror. Even his relatively minor works were, at the very least, interesting failures. As his hero Beckett once said, “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” In the same vein, Vaid’s author bio in the 2008 issue of the annual literary journal Pratilipi referred to himself as “Infamous for breaking every rule in Hindi and famous for not winning prizes”. Of course, that last bit isn’t true, for there’s plenty else he’s famous for and, besides, narrators have been known to be occasionally thrifty with the truth.

Published on February 14, 2020

QUOTED: "My stories, both short and long, are never mere stories; my novels and plays do not aim at telling intricate and interesting and eventful stories. They do not require a well-designed plot. They create an atmosphere, an alternative reality, if you will, a universe of words and sounds and suggestions and characters that are both familiar and strange, normal as well as abnormal, mundane and magical, real and unreal, just as in dreams and nightmares."

In Conversation with Krishna Baldev Vaid
POSTED ON

APRIL 10, 2017 IN AUTHOR INTERVIEW, AUTHOR RENDEZVOUS, AUTHORS, FEATURED

AUTHOR

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Tags: author, author interview, Indian literature, krishna baldev vaid, literature, none other, Translation, writing, writing process
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We recently spoke to the author of None Other, the august 89-year old Krishna Baldev Vaid. He is well known for his books The Broken Mirror, Steps in Darkness and many more.

Below are a few questions we asked Vaid to know more about his writing process.

When you get an idea for a book, how does it form into a story? Please share your writing process with us.

It differs in details from piece to piece, from novel to novel, from play to play but essentially, it assumes the urgency and intensity of an obsession that elevates me to a level of receptivity, that is extraordinary if not abnormal, to intuitions, perceptions, choices of words and phrases and puns and euphonious effects, in short a style suitable to the occasion. The emphasis is never on story as such. My stories, both short and long, are never mere stories; my novels and plays do not aim at telling intricate and interesting and eventful stories. They do not require a well-designed plot. They create an atmosphere, an alternative reality, if you will, a universe of words and sounds and suggestions and characters that are both familiar and strange, normal as well as abnormal, mundane and magical, real and unreal, just as in dreams and nightmares.

Do you have any writing rituals that you follow?

I am afraid I do not have any writing rituals except perhaps a room of my own, a closed door, a wall in front of me, a space to pace up and down, silence, sometimes low and slow classical instrumental, preferably sarod, music. I tend to make fun of writing rituals in my novels and stories such as ”Bimal Urf Jayein To Jayein Kahan” (”Bimal in Bog” in English) and ”Doosra Na Koi” (”None Other” in English).

When I was young, I had a somewhat romantic association with writing and artistic rituals. In old age, every elderly movement and gesture and activity automatically and inevitably becomes ritualistic. You don’t need any other rituals.

How do you pick books that you want to translate? Is there a reason behind that choice, such as for Alice in Wonderland?

I am not a professional and a prolific translator into English or Hindi. I think I have translated more of my own stuff in Hindi into English than other writers’—alive or dead. I tend to believe I would have been less of a self-translator into English if there had been an active band of good professional translators into English from Hindi. Perhaps, in that case, I would still have used my bilingualism for doing some selective translations of some modernistic Hindi fiction and poetry as love’s labour or out of a sense of duty; I don’t know.

Two of my dear friends, Nirmal Verma and Srikant Varma, asked me to translate two of their novels, ”Ve Din” (Nirmal) and ”Doosri Baar” (Srikant), and I complied because I liked their work, but I did not ‘pick’ them. In the case of ”Alice in Wonderland”, I chose it for translation into Hindi because of its status as a classic, not only as a children’s book but for ‘children’ of all ages and, I believe, nationalities. I used to read it to my three little girls as they were growing up. Besides, the only great version available in Hindi was a great adaptation by a great Hindi poet, Shamsher Bahadur Singh—”Alice Ascharya Lok Mein.” I wanted to do a translation of the complete original text. The third major translation of an important book-long Hindi poem that I did was ”Andhere Mein” (”In The Dark”) by Muktibodh. I selected it because of my admiration for it as a modern classic by a great Hindi poet who died in splendid neglect except as a cult poet for the discerning younger Hindi poets, without a published collection of his own poetry.

I chose two plays of Samuel Beckett—”Waiting for Godot” and ”Endgame”—in 1968, before he became a noble laureate, because Beckett was my favourite modern writer. I wrote to him for permission while I was a visiting professor in English at Brandeis university. He wrote back a brief but gracious post-card from Paris after a couple of months, granting me permission even though he assumed I’d do my translation from his own English version of those plays written originally by him in French. I wrote back thanking him and mentioning that his assumption was correct even though I assured him that even though my French was inadequate, I’d also take into account his French original of the plays.

In addition to these three Hindi books, I also translated some Hindi poems and stories of some important Hindi writers, only one of whom—Ashok Vajpeyi—is alive: Shamsher Bahadur Singh, Srikant Varma, Muktibodh, Upendranath Ashk, Hari Shankar Parsai, Ashok Vajpeyi. All these have been published in English magazines but not collected in a book.

The only other notable translation into Hindi that I have done was commissioned by the French embassy in Delhi—it was Racine’s ”Phaedra”. I told them my Hindi translation would be from a standard English version of the original French and that I’d consult the original French with the help of my inadequate French. My Hindi version was published by Rajkamal Prakashan and was staged in Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, and Delhi under the direction of an important and renowned French director, M. Lavadaunt.

How do you decide which language to write in and which one to translate into? And why?

This decision was made by me rather early in my life during my final year of M.A. in English at Govt. College, Lahore when I was only nineteen years old and living under the menacing shadow of the partitioned independence of India into two countries, India and Pakistan. My heart was set on being a creative writer, a fictionist. I already knew that I would have to do something else for earning a living if I wanted to write on my own terms without making any compromise with anybody. I did not want to write in English, even though I was fairly good in it and knew that I’d get better, because I didn’t consider it as an Indian language and did not dream in it. I didn’t want to choose Punjabi as my medium of creative expression, even though it was my mother tongue, because I didn’t consider it rich enough. The choice was between Urdu, which I was also good at thanks to my proficiency in Persian, and Hindi which I had almost entirely taught myself thanks to the similarity of its and Urdu’s grammar and syntax. With more of Hindi reading and the help of a good dictionary and with an openness to Urdu and Persian for the enrichment of my vocabulary, I could forge a style of my own that might even be better than standard stultified Hindi, or Urdu for that matter. I soon was able to achieve a style of my own free from the stiffness of both standard Hindi and Urdu and also the simplistic hotch-potch of the so-called Hindustani.

English is the only language I can translate my own Hindi books into; my own kind of Hindi is the only language that I can translate any English book into. Since I translate only what I like and want to and since I do not do it for my living, I do not do much translation. And now I am approaching the end and the final goodbye to all this.

Does the translation process differ when you are translating a book by an author other than yourself?

Yes, it does. If the other author is alive, you can refer your questions and problems and enigmas to him/her if he/she is easily accessible. If the author is dead or distant, metaphorically or really, you may either use your own discretion or consult an expert in that language or on that author.

If it is your own stuff that you are rendering into another language that you know well, you have only to refer to yourself for all questions and problems and enigmas and uncertainties. So in one sense you are free and self-sufficient but in another sense you are as lonely as you were when you were writing your original book. Of course, if in the course of self-translating if a new flash comes to you, you may as well take advantage of it without any compunction. You may end up adding to and subtracting from your original book. This addition and subtraction may help or harm the book but you are greater liberty in this case. Some writer friends of mine feel absolutely free to change their original books while translating them. Qurratullain Haider, an Urdu writer-friend who is no more was one such novelist of great merit. I did not read her own free self-translations into English but I did read several of her Urdu novels and was aleays charmed and impressed.

In my own case, when I was doing my own novel, ”Bimal Urf Jaayein To Jaayein Kahan”, into ”Bimal in Bog” for my friend P. Lal’s publishing outfit, Writers Workshop, I gave myself the freedom to welcome new ideas and flashes and linguistic arrangements and puns, etc., so that I had no objection when he changed ‘Translated by the author’ to ‘Transcreated by the author’. Even otherwise it seems to me now that all good translations are, to varying degrees, transcreations.

Are the themes of your writings related to your life experiences?

Perhaps, what you really meant to ask was: Are your novels and stories and plays autobiographical? But let me first answer your question as you phrased or framed it. The themes of one’s writings are always related to one’s life experiences. Even one’s entirely imagined themes are related in some way or other to one’s life experiences because one’s imagination is also shaped and determined by one’s own life experiences. Besides, all human experiences have an element of underlying universality that is a unifying factor which overrides apparent diversity. At the same time, every autobiographical detail undergoes an alchemical transformation in art. The tree or the flower you see with your eyes in real life is never the same as the one you describe or paint or sculpt or sing in your novel or paint in your picture or sculpt in your sculpture or sing in your music. The same is true of any feeling or emotion or action or happening, come to think of it. Even the most autobiographical detail undergoes a change through the alchemy of imaginative and creative writing.

QUOTED: "The multiple relocations defined his life and work: He epitomised a mid-20th century writer, uprooted, searching for a home in his words. An author for whom the written word was the only truth. He rejected the reader, mocked the critic, spurned the market and firmly remained on the other side of all possible boundaries. Along with Nirmal Verma and Krishna Sobti, Vaid defined Hindi fiction for nearly seven decades. Sobti had a vocal public presence, Nirmal was reticent, Vaid a recluse."

Krishna Baldev Vaid’s novels stepped into uncharted zones
Krishna Baldev Vaid remained away from the literary establishment. Perhaps that’s why he did not receive awards.

Written by Ashutosh Bhardwaj | Updated: February 8, 2020 12:29:27 pm

Krishna Baldev Vaid (1927- 2020). (Express Archive)
I once recorded a long interview with Krishna Baldev Vaid over several sessions. Elaborating the significance of ilham (epiphany) in literature, he made a statement that can be on the desk of any creative artist: “Ilhaam ke liye ibadat jaruri hai (Regular worship is necessary to achieve an epiphany).” Born in a small town in Pakistan in July 1927, Vaid migrated to India during Partition, went to Harvard in the 1950s for a PhD on Henry James, alternated between the US and India for decades before he died in New York on Thursday.

The multiple relocations defined his life and work: He epitomised a mid-20th century writer, uprooted, searching for a home in his words. An author for whom the written word was the only truth. He rejected the reader, mocked the critic, spurned the market and firmly remained on the other side of all possible boundaries. Along with Nirmal Verma and Krishna Sobti, Vaid defined Hindi fiction for nearly seven decades. Sobti had a vocal public presence, Nirmal was reticent, Vaid a recluse.

Editorial: Loss of Krishna Baldev Vaid marks the end of one of the most vibrant eras of Hindi literature

Ten novels, 15 story collections, six books of personal journals, seven plays and a large number of translations from Hindi to English and vice versa. His oeuvre is staggering, as is his artistic achievement. Some writers hit a wonderful chord in the beginning and play the same familiar note through their lives. Vaid always stepped into uncharted zones, sought a new form with almost every novel.

His first novel, Uska Bachpan (Steps Into Darkness, 1957), was a classic but Vaid did not repeat its realist narrative and became among the most experimental writers of 20th century India. Guzara Hua Jamana (The Broken Mirror, 1981) is about Partition trauma, Doosra Na Koi (No Other, 1992) is the monologue of an old writer dying alone in a crumbling home. In Kala Kolaj and Maya Lok he shattered the boundaries of fiction and embraced what is called the anti-novel. Add to this his seminal work of literary criticism, Technique in the Tales of Henry James, which he published in his 30s.

James Joyce and Samuel Beckett were among his favourite authors and his erudition ranged from the Sanskrit epics to the Western classics. A master in Persian and English, he taught English literature at various US universities for decades but chose Hindi for his creative writing. He is also perhaps the most Urdu-ised Hindi writer.

Besides novels, his diaries make for great literature. Remarkable for their candour, self-deprecating humour and a reflection on his writerly struggle, he also records in vivid details his relations with friends. People ranging from Anais Nin, Ramchandra Gandhi, A K Ramanujan, J Swaminathan, Nirmal Verma and M F Husain recur in his diaries. A diary entry talks about the instance he sold his Chandigarh home to Manmohan Singh long before the latter became the prime minister.

Some rigid progressive writers often accused Vaid of being “influenced by the west”. Responding to them, he wrote that alienation and disillusion are essential Indian values, often witnessed among ancient monks and sages. It was a profound form of alienation that germinated paralysing doubts within Arjuna before the beginning of the great war.

A thematic thread runs through Vaid’s work as the child protagonist of Uska Bachpan eventually grows into the old writer, pondering over his childhood, Partition violence and the relationship between men and women. But underneath these themes run deep metaphysical anxieties, a desire to realise the higher truth, aatm-bodha. His protagonist knows more than he can convey and, thus, his entire quest is to express his knowledge in exact words that often elude him. His inquiry, like that of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is essentially a linguistic one.

His unflinching commitment to the word brought him many admirers, rather devotees. Some writers have a large following of readers, some are writers’s writers. He belonged to the second category. Called K B by his contemporaries and Vaid Saab by younger ones, he was widely believed to be the epitome of a modern monk-writer. Along with Balzac’s The Unknown Masterpiece, Henry James’s The Madonna of the Future and Franz Kafka’s Hunger Artist, I rate Doosra Na Koi among the greatest works ever written about the life and death of a creative artist.

Vaid remained away from the literary establishment. Perhaps that’s why he did not receive awards. In fact, he withdrew his name from the only award Delhi’s Hindi Akademi once announced for him because the Sheila Dixit government had suddenly decided to reconsider the awards after a Congressman had complained of “obscenity” in his writings.

I once published a short story, Mithya (The Illusion), whose protagonist, a young writer, is living with guilt because he is unable to write anything worthy that he could offer as guru dakshina to a veteran author he secretly admires. Tonight I can reveal who the Guru was. Vaid Saab, Pranam.

This article first appeared in the print edition on February 8, 2020 under the title “His experiments with form.” Bhardwaj is a journalist and writer. His forthcoming book, The Death Script, traces the Naxal insurgency.

In Memory of Krishna Baldev Vaid, Pioneer of Modern Hindi Fiction
By Literary Hub
March 3, 2020
After having lived a long life, and having practiced the art of writing for over seven decades, Krishna Baldev Vaid breathed his last in New York on February 6, 2020. A pioneer in modern Hindi fiction, Vaid created a new narrative language articulating an amazing poetics of exaggeration, transgression and irony. His view of the human condition was marked by his experience of the partition of India which led him in his boyhood to leave his hometown in Pakistan and settle in post-partition India. Later his explorations of the human predicament, the tragic insistence to find a new home in relationships and locations, the absurd negativity of circumstances, led him to seek solace, indeed refuge in literature. Studying and later teaching English, both in India and the US, Vaid chose to write in Hindi. His Hindi throughout remained replete with Urdu, the language he had learnt in school and he became the most Urdu fiction writer in Hindi.

His first novel translated into English, Steps in Darkness, has acquired the status of a classic in Hindi and, in a way, anticipates his literary journey which continued to be steps in darkness. Vaid had no predecessors in Hindi. He decided to depart the dominant mode of realism and explore reality in non-realistic, sometimes surrealistic ways. He firmly believed that language in literature does not merely reflect reality but also, more significantly, creates it. A tireless experimentalist, in fiction, in drama and in diaries, having written over 40 works, Vaid created a geography of empathy for those who have been thrown or pushed out to the margins of life, society and morality. His novels and short stories have been translated into many languages including English, many in his own translation, French, Japanese, German, Russian besides many Indian languages.

Born in Dinga on July 27, 1927 he was educated in India and the US and was, as he recalled, one of the first two Indians, along with a classmate, S. Nagarajan, to get his PhD in English from Harvard. His thesis on Henry James, under the guidance of his mentor, Harry Levin, Technique in the Tales of Henry James, was published by Harvard University Press, and his professors included I.A. Richards and Archibald MacLeish. He taught at Delhi University, Punjab University in Chandigarh, the State University of New York at Potsdam and Brandeis University. He was married for over 64 years to Champa (Bali) Vaid—a Hindi poet and painter—before she died in 2017; they have three daughters, all living in the US.

At Potsdam, Vaid taught his literary heroes, Beckett, Joyce, Proust, Virginia Woolf, as well as African American literature and creative writing, to among others T.C. Boyle. At his Star Lake summer writer workshops, Anais Nin, Paul Engle, Richard Poirier, James Dickey and more came to teach. The day he arrived in New York by boat in 1958 he was met by Gunther Stuhlmann, his agent (and Anais Nin’s), and when asked what he would like to do on his first day in the city, he said he wanted to hear jazz and go to the Bowery. His translations into Hindi include Alice in Wonderland, Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Racine’s Phedre. He translated into English other Hindi writers, Muktibodh, Shrikant Verma, Nirmal Verma and Ashok Vajpeyi.

With the death of Krishna Baldev Vaid the age of major fiction writers in Hindi ends for the time being and the Indian literary world, indeed the literary world at large, feels the absence of this lively, witty, daring master of letters.

He is survived by his three daughters, four grandchildren, one great grandchild, and his brother.

–Ashok Vajpeyi, Hindi poet, essayist and literary-cultural critic.