ABSTRACT
Krishna Sobti located her creative burden in the rich, fecund field of words most eloquently. But when she got her first proofs, she found that the strait-jacketed editorial division of the publishing house had completely changed the complexion of her novel by doing away with her unique and novel mix of colloquial Punjabi from rural Punjab and substituting it with perfect, chaste 'high' Hindi. Her creative firmament speaks a carefully chosen amalgam of Punjabi, Urdu and Hindi, the languages that coursed through the breath of all of North India, the tongue of the Punjab from which she hailed and of the Delhi in which she settled down. Sensitively gauging the demands of the dramatic moment, it incorporates both the rough rhythm and edges of everyday Punjabi slang and exchanges, and the poetic cadences of more lyrical, romantic exchanges in Urdu or Hindi.
