Send us a textRajinder Singh Bedi, a leading short story writer in the Urdu's progressive writers' movement was born in 1915. He started to write at an early age and achieved fame as an author of path-breaking stories like Woolen Coat and Give Me Your Sorrows. After the partition, he spent the rest of his life in the film industry in Mumbai, or Bombay as it was called then. Starting with a low-budget movie called Bari Behan in 1949, Bedi succeeded as a script or a dialogue writer or a director of top-rated movies like Dev Das, Madhumati, Mirza Ghalib, Dastak, Anupama, Satya Kaam, Baharon Ke Sapne, and Mere Hamdam Mere Dost. Professor Gopi Chand Narang wrote the first detailed well-argued structuralist analytic article in 1965 on Bedi's art of story writing. Professor Narang established that Bedi's creativity sought inspiration from the mythic roots or archetypal imprints of the Indian culture. His concept of womanhood had footprints of Shakti or Mamta – the one who suffers yet brimming with the life she nurtures her creation. A great calamity hit Bedi when his son, Narinder, a successful film director, suddenly passed away in 1982. He himself was afflicted with a stroke in 1979. The author had many successes; he faced some failures and suffered tragic losses, but he never lost the zest for life, a sense of humor, and love for his family and the people around him. He passed away in 1984. In this episode, I present his famous story, Woolen Coat.

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