S.Kalidas' Archive

Kissa Amrita-Imroz

 By S. Kalidas

Amrita Imroz: A Love story

Uma Trilok

128 pages. Price Rs 195

Penguin Books, India 2006

This moving narrative should have originally been in Punjabi. And in verse. Then it could have been put to music and sung by faqirs, darveshes, Bhands and Mirasis with an iktara (single stringed lute) at melas and mazaars (Sufi shrines) by the banks of the Ravi or the Chenab. And in keeping with the tradition of the region, it would have been immortalised to join the long list of classical love-ballads like Sohni-Mahiwal, Heer-Ranjha, Sassi-Punnu…

But it’s never an ideal world; and English might bring the book a readership and an exposure that this extraordinary creative-couple (author Amrita Pritam and artist Imroz) shunned and were impervious to in their long and passionate tryst with each other and their respective muses. Amrita had a strong public persona— because she was a successful writer  and because she chose to live life on her own terms— and attracted widespread (even if at times negative) notice. Imroz, however, who is perhaps temperamentally shy and reclusive, chose not to ‘exhibit’ (he dislikes the very word) his works in the professional art gallery domain. He thus remains somewhat of a shadowy figure looming on the fringes of Pritam’s popular presence. After meeting Amrita he had so completely merged his identity with hers that he was always present but hardly ever noticed. What makes this little book significant is that within its pages Imroz-who-was-once-Inderjeet claims both voice and space for the first time— albeit through Uma Trilok’s artful mediation.

Charming intimacies apart, despite all the moralistic accusations hurled at them by a hypocritical society, the book brings out the deeply spiritual aspect of their love. To take just a sample of Pritam’s lines:

Chadar phateyan mein taakiyan laawan

Ambar phate kya seena?

Khavind mare hor karan mein

Aashiq mare kya jeena?

(A sheet is torn, I stitch it with patches

But can I stitch the sky?

A husband dies, I take another                                  

If my lover dies, what use is life?)

Imroz means today in Persian. As Trilok points out, the artist Imroz was the present that Pritam inhabited for forty long years. And as Imroz himself asserts, even after death Pritam will live on in him. The great Urdu poet, Jigar Moradabadi says in a famous ghazal:

Ik lafs-e-mohabbat hai

Adna sa fasana hai,

Simte to dil-e-aashiq

Phaile to zamaana hai.

(There’s word called love

It’s but a small story,

It contracts to fit the heart of the lover

When it expands it fills the epoch.)

With Trilok’s book, the story of Amrita and Imroz will indeed pervade our more cynical times.