Sukhbir

Sukhbir (Punjabi: ਸੁਖਬੀਰ, Hindi: सुखबीर; 9 July 1925 – 22 February 2012), alias Balbir Singh, was a Punjabi novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. He wrote and published for fifty years. He wrote seven novels, 11 short story collections, and five poetry collections, and made many translations of world literature, essays, letters and book reviews. Sukhbir alias Balbir Singh was born on 9 July 1925 to S. Mansha Singh and Smt. Shiv Kaur in Mumbai, India. He was the eldest of his siblings, who included three brothers and three sisters. He adopted the pen name Sukhbir after partition, when he was arrested during the student unrest in Mumbai in 1950. He had already started publishing in literary magazines and was a known name as a budding writer. While he was in jail in Nasik, one of his editor friends in whose magazine his poems were to be published, changed his name to Sukhbir, to avoid the authorities' attention. Subsequently, Sukhbir chose to retain this as his pen name, as many other writers with the name of Balbir Singh had sprung up by then and were cashing in on his established name.