Gurdial Singh Rahi was an Indian writer and novelist who wrote in Punjabi.
16 Facts About Gurdial Singh
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Gurdial Singh was honoured with the Padma Shri in 1998 and Jnanpith Award in 1999.
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Gurdial Singh was born on 10 January 1933 in the village of Bhaini Fateh near Jaitu in British Punjab.
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Gurdial Singh's father, Jagat Singh, was a carpenter, and his mother, Nihal Kaur, took care of the household.
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The young Gurdial Singh began working as a carpenter at the age of 12 to support his family's poor financial conditions.
6.
In childhood, Gurdial Singh was interested in painting but gradually he applied himself to a formal education.
7.
Gurdial Singh completed his Matric examination while he worked in various day time jobs.
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Nirmal Verma 8.
Gurdial Singh started his literary career in 1957 with a short story, "Bhaganwale", which was published in Panj Darya, a magazine edited by Mohan Gurdial Singh.
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Gurdial Singh wrote four different versions of the novel over the course of four years, before he decided to publish the fourth and final one in 1964.
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The various characters Gurdial Singh portrayed in the novel were recreations of real-life people woven into a fictitious storyline.
11.
Gurdial Singh received various awards over the course of his life, including the Sahitya Akademi Award in Punjabi in 1975 for the novel Adh Chanani Raat, the Soviet Land Nehru Award in 1986, the Bhai Veer Gurdial Singh Fiction Award in 1992, the Shiromani Sahitkar Award in 1992, the Jnanpith Award in 1999 and the Padma Shri in 1998.
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Gurdial Singh shared the Jnanpith Award with Hindi language author Nirmal Verma.
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Gurdial Singh suffered from a heart attack earlier in 2016 after which he was partially paralysed.
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Gurdial Singh died on 16 August 2016, when he was taken off life support systems, after it was determined that Singh had shown no signs of recovery.
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Gurdial Singh is survived by his wife, Balwant Kaur, a son and two daughters.
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Gurdial Singh has published various novels, short story collections, plays, children's literature and an autobiography in two parts.