Every child in India has read at least one short story by Premchand, either in school or in university. At our mehfil at Prithvi we decided to honour the legacy of Premchand through his rich literature.

His oeuvre consists of over 250 short stories, dozens of novels, essays and translations of various foreign literary works into Hindi/Urdu. To explore Premchand’s life and works we invited many people associated with his work. The list of people included Nadira Babar (Apa) and her team Ekjute, Mujeeb Saab who has dedicated his life to Premchand’s stories and has done several plays based on his work, Iqbal Niyazi Saab and Javed Siddiqui Saab.

The evening started with an introduction of Premchand given by Javed Saab. He spoke about the humility of a man whose work spans far and wide. He mentioned that Premchand’s work has a strong flavor of a section of society, which…