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To reduce her autobiography to a love story could therefore be belittling. Of course, these two men did inform and probably influence her thoughts, but they never defined her. (L) Amrita Pritam, 1970 and (R) in Bulgaria in 1980Ī lot has been said about the two men in Amrita’s life - the poet Sahir Ludhianvi and painter Imroz.
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Be it her interaction with Uzbek women writers in Tashkent, meeting poets and writers in Bulgaria and Georgia, thinking of Hitler’s trial sitting in Munich or listening to the story of a 16-year-old Pushkin’s sojourn with a group of gypsies to Montenegro, Amrita’s travel journal from the 1960s to late 1970s and early-1980s is exhaustive. For her, religions are many and could have limitations but spiritualism is beyond conflicts. She wanted the word ‘religion’ to be replaced with ruhaniyat (spiritualism). Some of her fascinating travelogues include her visit to Paris in 1986 for a UNESCO conference where she requested a small change in the topic of the session: ‘Science and Religion Should Go Together’. By her own admission, she never maintained a diary but loved writing during her travels. Her memoirs reveal that Pritam was an avid traveller. Who knew then there would come a day when she would hopelessly fall in love with Sahir? Even if that love story remained unfulfilled.įrom our archives: The untold love story of Sahir Ludhianvi and Amrita Pritam She wonders, with a hint of mischief, if this is the doing of Sahir’s shadow from another birth. From that day on, no utensil in the household is designated Hindu or Muslim. Amrita’s protest isn’t a storm in a teacup. Lo and behold, even her father was blissfully unaware of this detail. She resolves not to use any other utensil but those very glasses to drink tea and milk. Once she learns these glasses are for Muslim guests, she is mortified. These glasses aren’t mixed with the other utensils. And she is the one changing the frames.įearless, Pritam’s rebellious streak is evident in the narration of a striking episode from her childhood: one day, she notices that her grandmother keeps three different glasses on a separate shelf in the kitchen.
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Her words create an image in front of you and the moment she realises you are hooked, she nudges you to turn to the next page, the next image and the next - like a reel of moving pictures in a bioscope. Whatever be the turn of events, tragic or happy, she eggs you to move on. She doesn’t allow you to languish on one page for far too long. (L) Amrita Pritam's mother, Raj Bibi (R) cover for Raseedi Ticketīut then, surprise and shock go hand-in-hand when it comes to Pritam’s style of storytelling. (Pritam was 11 when she lost her mother.) Just as you absorb Nand and Raj Bibi’s individual histories and how these two lonely souls chanced upon each other on a rainy day - and that too in a den of sadhus - you read about Raj Bibi’s untimely death. In the initial pages of Raseedi Ticket, Pritam narrates the story of how her parents met how a young saint-poet named Nand (rechristened Kartar Singh) was destined to renounce his sainthood for the pleasures and pains of domesticity, and the companionship of a school teacher, Raj Bibi. After all, how many autobiographies begin with a sentence like, ‘Kya yeh qayamat ka din hai?’ (Is this doomsday?) For her, questions are universal and objective, but answers are subjective.
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Her words, poems, anecdotes, ruminations provoke you to question, but you cannot expect her to provide any answers. But closure doesn’t come until the last page. Every story ends without closure, compelling the reader to move on to the next chapter in the hope of getting closer to that promised conclusion. And each postage stamp unfurls like the story on a postcard. Raseedi Ticket (Revenue Stamp, 1976), her autobiography, is an album of postage stamps. Had she been amongst us, how would she have celebrated her 100th birthday? Would she have written a letter to herself, perhaps recalling an episode from her childhood, or penned an essay on the strange dreams and nightmares that trailed her like a shadow through most of her life, or would she have mourned the happenings in Kashmir and woven another Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu (Ode to Waris Shah)? We can only imagine - but we cannot imagine the way she imagined and envisioned life.īe it a recurring dream, the fear of losing a loved one, an anxiety attack - Pritam found catharsis through words. The writer Amrita Pritam would have turned 100 on 31 August 2019.