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.
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