 – he dabbled in business, in which he was a miserable failure.With his high-spirits and passion for life of the common people, he travelled through villages and towns of Punjab with the IPTA theatre group; then began to teach to earn a living; and then lived in the USSR for seven years as a Hindi translator.This sprawling reservoir of experience collected in the hustle-bustle of various occupations ultimately filtered down into his stories and novels, without which, as we realise today, the world of Hindi prose would have been deprived and desolate.