The Literary Diplomat

By
Ambica Gulati

Navtej Sarna (IFS Retd)

Literary Genes

As political and societal changes gained momentum, the Sarna family’s penchant for reading and writing continued to grow. Sarna credits his love for books to this early learning. Books, pen, and paper have been his friends forever.
‘My parents were Punjabi writers who were equally at home in the world of English classics. My father would often talk about the leatherbound classics he had to leave behind in Rawalpindi at the time of the Partition.’ Both his parents would go on to become major names in the world of Punjabi literature. His father, Mohinder Singh Sarna, whose centenary year fell in 2023 and was marked by a well-attended two-day seminar organised by the Sahitya Akademi and the Bhai Vir Singh Sahitya Sadan, wrote several novels, path-breaking short stories, and volumes of epic poetry. Widely decorated and critically acclaimed, he was a recipient of, among many others, the Sahitya Akademi Award.

Navtej’s mother, Surjit Sarna was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for translation, having translated major classics like The Woman in White (1859) by Wilkie Collins, The Words by Jean-Paul Sartre and The Heart of Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott.
‘Even at ninety-two, my mother has read my latest book, Crimson Spring, page by page, slowly but very carefully.’
The literary genes were evident in his sister Jaskiran Chopra too, who passed away in February 2024. A journalist and an author of several books, she wrote prose and poetry in English, Hindi and Urdu.

The Student Reporter
As his father had a transferable job, Sarna’s childhood was spent between Delhi and Dehradun along with a two-year stay in Nangal, in Rupnagar district in Punjab. Completing his schooling in 1973 at St. Joseph’s Academy, Dehradun, Sarna graduated from Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi University and earned his law degree from the Faculty of Law.
Having parents with an intellectual bent of mind and roots embedded deeply in tradition, Sarna had a clear goal of joining the civil services. ‘My father was in the services. It was a salaried living; things were always accounted for. I knew that a good education would lead to a good job.’

However, several other options came along. Though he had a degree in law, he never thought seriously of pursuing it as a profession. ‘In the nineteen seventies and eighties, there was a perception of law being a family business. I also had the choice of doing an MBA or chartered accountancy after completing my graduation in commerce, but that didn’t appeal to me. Given a chance, I would have done my masters in English Literature but that was not going to get me a job,’ he says. So, while he prepared for the civil services, he followed his other passions.

While attending law classes during the day, he would go for French classes in the morning and attend journalism classes in the evening at the Dateline School of Journalism.

Sarna’s first feature article was published in 1977 in the Sunday magazine of The Hindustan Times. Eventually, he became the university correspondent for the Evening News. As the creative flame grew stronger, he wrote profusely during this phase. ‘I wrote features, interviews, columns, humour pieces, human interest stories, middles, across newspapers and magazines such as Evening News, The Statesman, The Times of India, Femina, basically wherever my work could get published.’



Ambica Gulati
rmed with an experience of two decades in journalism, Ambica Gulati is a storyteller. She loves meeting people, exploring places and is turning into a photo geek. She has been part of an eminent coffee table book 100 Legal Luminaries of India, worked in magazines (Life Positive, Swagat, Outlook Traveller), written on food, culture wellness and more, and is bored when stationed in one place for too long. Follow her on https://www.instagram.com/ambicagulati/