Nirmal Verma was born on 3 April 1929 in
Shimla, where his father worked as an officer in the Civil and Services Department of the British Indian Government. He was the seventh child among his eight siblings. One of his brothers is one of India's greatest artists
Ram Kumar. He is survived by his wife, Gagan Gill who is a writer. He wrote his first story for a students' magazine in the early 1950s. He completed Masters of Arts in History from
St. Stephen's College,
Delhi University. Thereafter he started teaching in Delhi and writing for various literary magazines. His activism streak was visible even during his student days; in 1947–48, he regularly attended Mahatma Gandhiji's morning prayer meetings in Delhi, even though he was a card holding member of
Communist Party of India, which he resigned in 1956, after Soviet invasion of
Hungary. The very activism was soon to be reflected in his stories, which added a whole new dimension to the Indian literary scene. He stayed in
Prague for 10 years, where he was invited by
Oriental Institute to initiate a program of translation of modern Czech writers like
Karel Čapek,
Milan Kundera or
Bohumil Hrabal to Hindi; he also learnt
Czech language, and translated nine world classics to Hindi, before returning home in 1968, as the result of
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. From 1980–83, Verma served as chairman of Nirala creative writing chair in
Bharat Bhavan,
Bhopal. In 1988–90 he was director of Yashpal Creative Writing Chair in
Shimla. In his popular novel
A Torn Happiness,
August Strindberg looms large over the heads of many characters. He died on 25 October 2005 in New Delhi. == Awards and milestones ==