Rupinderpal Dhillon travelled to Venice

A PUNGLISH novel has been published for the first time.

The Blue Light fuses Punjabi words with an English sentence structure to create the hybrid language its author, Rupinderpal Dhillon, hears spoken all the time.

Mr Dhillon, who lives in Horley with his family, said: "Indian people have been in this country for around 100 years now and most of my generation have been brought up here.

"We speak and think in English but communicate with our parents in Punjabi. This is the way we all speak and, according to some experts, it is the second most spoken language in this country."

Despite having always been able to speak Punjabi, the accountant and novelist took around 12 weeks to learn to read it and a year to write it. It took nine months to be proof-read by a Punjabi-speaker.

His finished work will now be released on Saturday, January 27, and he is hoping it will appeal to the Asian communities around Horley, in Redhill, Crawley and Three Bridges.

The story follows Raisha, a British Punjabi who is taken back to India when his parents die and befriends some men.

He does not know that they are smugglers, carrying alcohol into Indian states where it is illegal. Unlike most Punjabi novels, Mr Dhillon's is not religious and travels from India to Pakistan to Venice, which he visited to research the narrative.

He said: "Lots of Indian literature is very boring and tends to concentrate on village life - what the author knows. Mine ends up in Italy and involves Christians, Muslims and Sikhs. The message is that everyone should be together."

His more exciting alternative has brought him to the attention of Parminder Chadha, sister of the film director Gurinder Chadha, who helped write song lyrics for the films Bride And Prejudice and Bend It Like Beckham.

She is setting up a British Punjabi singers' and writers' network, which he has been asked to join, with the opportunity to host book readings around London.

As well as being an enjoyable story, Mr Dhillon hopes his novel will enshrine his Punjabi-English language, which, he said, is often used by singers but has never been written down.

He said: "This particular form, this Creole language, will probably disappear with my generation as more younger people just grow up speaking English. My book is a way of keeping a record of it before it vanishes."

The Blue Light by Rupinderpal Dhillon is published by Diggory Press at £6.99.