Waryam Singh Sandhu was born at Sur Singh in Amritsar district in 1945, was involved in the Naxalite movement as a young man, taught at Jalandhar, and writes short stories.
Chauthi Koot, the fourth direction, won the Sahitya Akademi award in 2000. Its stories are set during the militancy years in Punjab and they refuse to take a side, which at the time they were written was the hardest available position.
The title story, about a Sikh family travelling by train during the emergency and a dog that will not stop barking, was filmed by Gurvinder Singh in 2015 and shown at Cannes.
He has also written on 1947 and on the Ghadar movement, and edits the magazine Sirjana.
He is the writer who has done most to put the 1980s and 1990s into Punjabi literature as experience rather than as position.
Chauthi Koot was filmed by Gurvinder Singh in 2015 and shown at Cannes, which is how the story reached an audience outside Punjabi.
He taught at Guru Nanak Dev University and edits a Punjabi literary journal. His non-fiction on the Ghadar movement rests on archival work rather than on the standard accounts.
His subject is the ordinary family caught between armed sides, which is the part of the 1980s that neither of the standard narratives has room for.