Harishankar Parsai: The satirist who chose duty over love

A whole canopy of clouds seemed to descend over Shakuntala’s face. She only asked, “Why?” Parsai placed his weary reality into her palm. His financial condition was not such that he could run two households. His sister Sita had been widowed, and her entire family was now breathing under his shadow. Four children had to be educated and set on their own feet. This responsibility he had taken upon himself, and now, in its very fire, Harishankar was watching his share of dreams burn away.

Tears rolled down Shakuntala’s eyes. She said only this, “Were I nowhere in your thoughts?” In a choked voice, Parsai said, “You were. Always were. That is exactly why I could not bring myself to say it. But I do not wish to drag you into my sorrow.”

After this, no words remained. The world stopped right there, in that very moment, forever. Parsai did not marry. He locked his share of love away inside himself like an unfinished page and fastened a latch on it, its bolts never opening for the rest of his life.

August was a strange month in Parsai’s life. On the 22nd of this month, he was born, and on the 10th of this month, his breath stopped. Both ends were tied within the same month, as though his entire life was like two pages of the same book: on one side, the pen that never bowed; on the other, the heart that bowed once and never rose again.

Even after this, the mirage did not leave Parsai’s trail. In 1971, the former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, D P Mishra, proposed sending him to the Rajya Sabha. Parsai gave his consent, and the garlands of dreams were strung together. But the peg gave way. The poet Shrikant Verma later revealed that in West Bengal, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, after defeating Jyoti Basu’s government to become Chief Minister, had gotten the Bengali writer Pramathanath Bishi nominated to the Rajya Sabha. Ray showed as much promptness in getting a writer of his own language and state into the Rajya Sabha as Mishra failed to show for the writer of his own language and state. Perhaps Mishra assumed that his simply submitting the name would be enough.

There was also a violent episode in Parsai’s life. At the end of the summer of 1973, elections were held for the Jabalpur Municipal Corporation. When the results came out, the Jan Sangh emerged as the largest party. Around the same time, on June 5, 1973, the RSS chief Guru Golwalkar died. In those days, Parsai used to write a satirical column called Suno Bhai Sadho in the Jabalpur-based newspaper Naveen Duniya, and in it, he linked Golwalkar’s death with the Jan Sangh’s electoral success with one sharp remark. This did not sit well with many. A few days later, two young men came to Parsai’s home and set upon him with sticks. Parsai had no inkling of what was coming. He fell to the ground, and after raining blows with their sticks, the two young men fled the spot at once. Parsai was so unwavering about his satire that protests continued in Jabalpur for five days. He himself spoke at one gathering, and the police, treating it as a cognizable offence, took action.

On the day of Rakhi, on the last night before his body gave way, he ate, spoonful by spoonful, only a potato and pea curry. Despite his sister Sita’s repeated pleading, he did not eat any roti. He said, “I have no hunger today.” And yet, the hunger of readers that he nourished for years through his satire, Hindi satire, has, to this day, not been able to fill that hunger with the same intensity.