Balwant Gargi Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

In Saunkan (English: Rival Women) in 1979, the paradigm of Yama-Yami, the Hindu god of death and his twin sister, becomes an occasion to glorify sexual union. Altogether dispensing with socio-political discourse, he turned to his new theme with a vengeance in Abhisarka (English: Lover) in 1990. Gargi’s penchant for the unexpected grew all-powerful.

Balwant Gargi taught for two years (1966–67) at the University of Washington, where he met Jeanne Henry, who later became his wife. This period was the basis of his autobiography The Naked Triangle.

Gargi was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award, the highest Indian literary award, in 1962 for his book Rang Manch. This was followed by the Padma Shri (1972), and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in Punjabi Playwriting in 1998. Gargi is one of the few artists to win both the Sahitya Akademi and Sangeet Natak Akademi awards.

Gargi’s first play, Loha kutt (English: Blacksmith) in 1944 became controversial for its stark picture of the Punjab countryside. At that juncture, he focused on poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, and superstition marking rural life, which continued in Saelpathar (English: Petrified Stone) in 1949, Navan mudh (English: New Beginning) in 1950, and Ghugi (English: Dove) in 1950. In the 1950 edition of Loha kutt, he resorted to drawing poetic and dramatic elements from J. M. Synge and Garcia Lorca. In subsequent works like Kanak di balli (English: Stalk of Wheat) in 1968 and Dhuni di agg (English: Fire in the Furnace) in 1977, these became his chief vehicles. For all the specificity of native locale, the former deflected as much towards Lorca’s Blood Wedding as the latter reminded one of Yerma. In Mirza-Sahiban in 1976, customs and conventions came in for bitter censure. Gradually, Gargi’s preoccupation with sex, violence, and death became almost an obsession. Antonin Artaud`s theatre of cruelty grew into his categorical imperative. This required his dramaturgy to proceed through mythopoeia, which turns explicit in his last plays.

Balwant Gargi (4 December 1916 – 22 April 2003) was an Indian Punjabi language dramatist, theatre director, novelist, and short story writer, and academic.

On 4 December 1916, in Canal House in Sehna, Barnala (Punjab), Balwant Gargi was born in a house near the Sirhind Canal, famous for being the spot where Razia Sultan was imprisoned. The second son in the family of Shiv Chand Garg, a head clerk in the Irrigation Department, he would go on create history in the world of Indian and Punjabi literature.