Munshi PremChand

Some days back I was getting bored and wanted to read something good and remembered that sometime back my father presented me with 2 books “Nirmala” and “Prema”. I started reading them and suddenly was lost in 18th century India and finally when I came back to 21st century again, I realized its 8’0 in night and I started at 12 in afternoon. The reason for this was:
The writer of many famous novels and one of the leaders in Hindi Literature Premchand. He was born on July 31, 1880 in the village Lamhi near Varanasi to Munshi Ajaib Lal, a clerk in the post office, and his wife Anandi. His parents named him Dhanpat Rai (master of wealth) while his uncle, Mahabir, a rich landowner, called him Nawab (Prince), the name Premchand first chose to write under. Premchand's parents died young - his mother when he was seven and his father while he was sixteen or seventeen and still a student. Premchand was left responsible for his stepmother and step-siblings.
In 1899, Premchand left Lamahi to take up the position of a schoolmaster at a mission school in the town of Chunar at a salary of eighteen rupees a month, with which he had to support his wife, his stepmother, his half-brother, his stepmother's younger brother and himself. Times were hard for the young man and they became harder still when he was fired from the job for being 'too independent'. He returned to Lamahi and soon got a job as an assistant master at a government school in Benaras, only to be transferred two months later to Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh a town near Allahabad where he first started writing seriously. He wrote over 300 stories, a dozen novels and two plays. The stories have been compiled and published as Maansarovar. Premchand lived a life of financial struggle. Once he took a loan of two-and-a-half rupees to buy some clothes. He had to struggle for three years to pay it back.
The main characteristic of Premchand's writings is his interesting story-telling and use of simple language. His novels describe the problems of the rural peasant classes. He avoided the use of highly Sanskritized Hindi (as was the common practice among Hindi writers), but rather he used the dialect of the common people. many of Premchand's stories were influenced by his own experiences with poverty and misery. His stories represented the ordinary Indian people as they were, without any embellishments. Unlike many other contemporary writers, his works didn't have any "hero" or "Mr. Nice" - they described people as they were. Premchand was a contemporary of some other literary giants of that era like Acharya Ram Chandra Shukla and Jaishankar Prasad.
Premchand has written about 300 short stories, several novels as well as many essays and letters. He has also written some plays. He also did some translations. Many of Premchand's stories have been translated into English and Russian. Godaan (The Gift of a Cow), his last novel, is considered the finest Hindi novel of all times.[4] The protagonist, Hori, a poor peasant, desperately longs for a cow, a symbol of wealth and prestige in rural India. Hori gets a cow but pays with his life for it. After his death, the village priests demand a cow from his widow to bring his soul to peace. In Kafan (Shroud), a poor man collects money for the funeral rites of his dead wife, but spends it on food and drink.
These two novels I read have lighted a new light to read all his literatures when I get time and I believe that his stories can definitely lead people to a much more stronger, decent world full of love to live in………………….