Puran Singh

Bride of the Sky Puran Singh

The Bride of the Sky, a poetic play written in 1924, has remained unpublished to this day. It is a remarkable piece of literature of its kind, that is, idealistic-romantic. A nymph of the sky falling in love with a man of the earth affords a theme which has captivated the minds of men in all ages and climes. Venus and Adonis, in the West, and Urvashi and Pururvasa, in India, have given to world literature poetry and drama of the noblest stature. In this poetic play the characters have not been given any names (except the nymph in the second half), on which technical point Puran Singh may be said to have anticipated a modernist tendency. But, as he claims, the characters have persistent individualities which serve for names equally well. The story is simple but has vast dimensions, like a geometric or cubist drawing. A nymph is flying about in the earthly air when a young man sees her. He instantly falls in love with her. The nymph responds to his love, comes down to the earth and stays with him for a day and a moonlit night, and then flies back to heaven.