Padma Sachdev
Padma Sachdev ( born 1940 in Jammu, India) is an author of Dogri literature. She also writes in English.
Life and work
Padma Sachdev was the oldest of three children in a wealthy family. Her father, Professor Jai Dev Badu was a Sanskrit scholar, the partition of India fell victim. She began her training in primary school in her home village Purmandal. At the age of four or five years she began to Sanskrit to memorize and recite. Later she sang in a local women's choir folk songs to Dogri and composed simple verses for this style of music. During their first year of college, she began to write poetry in Dogri and shared the stage soon with older poets. Shortly afterwards, at the age of 16, she married against the objections of both families at the time the twelve years older Dogri poet Ved Pal Deep. A few months later was diagnosed with tuberculosis in the gut and she spent the next three years in a hospital in Srinagar. At this time she had already made a name but with the poem Raja Diyan Mandiyan, which she wrote at the age of 14 years. This poem, as well as lesser-known seven of her poems were published in a selection of Dogri poetry in 1959. After her recovery, she returned to Jammu and worked there as a contributing artist at Radio Kashmir. A little later, she separated from her husband, which she alienated from the conservative citizens of Jammu. As a consequence, she lost her job. Shortly thereafter, she found a new job as a news anchor at a radio station in Delhi. Over time, she married a longtime friend, the singer Surinder Singh. 1969, at the age of almost 30 years, she published her first book of poetry, with whom she won the Sahitya Akademi Award. Later she published five more bands poem, as an autobiography.