Ram Sarup Ankhi


Ram Sarup Ankhi was a Sahitya Akademi Award winning Punjabi writer, novelist and poet of Punjab. He started as a poet but ended up as a fiction writer. He received Sarb Shresht Sahitkaar award in 2009.

Life

Ankhi was born on 28 August 1932, in the village of Dhaula in Barnala district of Indian Punjab. After completing his education from Government Mohindra College, Patiala, Ankhi continued with his ancestral profession of farming. Later, he served as an English teacher in a government school, but wrote in Punjabi language.
He died on 13 February 2010, and he was survived by his wife, three daughters and two sons. One daughter pre-deceased him Three of his wives passed away, and he later married a lady who spoke only broken Punjabi, leading everyone to conclude that his fourth wife was from outside Punjab, but from another Indian province.

Career

He started his career as a poet but ended as fiction writer. There are 15 novels, eight-story-books and five poem collections to his credit. He mostly wrote about the village life of Punjab; about farmer suicide and indebtedness and drug addiction etc. His well-known works includes Kothe Kharak Singh, Partapi, Dulle Di Dhab, Salphas, Kanak Da Qatleam. Malhe Jharhian and Apni Mitti De Rukh are the autobiographies.
The scene of most of his writings are a cluster of 50 villages in the Malwa region, from the districts of Mansa, Bathinda, Barnala, and Sangrur.

Awards

He received the Sahitya Akademi Award given by Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters in 1987 for his novel Kothe Kharak Singh, which was a story of three generations based on a fictional village in Punjab. He received many more including, Kartar Singh Dhaliwal award of 1992 from Panjabi Sahit Akademi, Ludhiana and Sarb Shresht Sahitkaar award in 2009.

Notable books

;Stories
Many of his books and short stories are adopted into films.
His Gelo novel is made into a Punjabi feature film directed by Manbhawan Singh releasing on 5 August 2016.
;Novels
;Autobiographies