Amrita Pritam , The Great Punjabi Poetess Who Was Madly In Love With Sahir Ludhianvi (On Amrita Pritam's 101st Birth Anniversary )

Ali Peter John

I am a self -confessed lover and will be a lover till the one I love gives me all the reasons to lose faith in love which is my only religion and only god.

My belief in love has weathered several storms , but it is only my love for love that has helped me in overcoming every storm and threat to love.And whenever I have a doubt about love , I think about the great love story between Sahir Ludhianvi and Amrita Pritam .I have read about some of the other great lovers all through my life , but no other love story has made the kind of impact on me like the love story of these two great lovers who I can identify with closely and completely.....

Sahir had already made a name for himself as a Urdu poet , especially for his poems of protest , revolt, freedom and above all love . Amrita was a well known poetess who wrote in Punjabi .

Destiny had decided to bring them together and destiny succeeded . Sahir and Amrita grew into good friends and their friendship led to a very pure form of love .

There are any number of stories about how they expressed their love for each other in moments  filled with long and meaningful silences . Sahir is said to have stood alone below Amrita's house with his heart beating like only the heart of a true lover can . And Amrita used to wait for Sahir like only a lover whose life depends on love could.....

And when Sahir gathered enough courage and went

up to  meet his love which was his life , the two lovers just kept looking into the eyes of each other which were their worlds that only mattered to them and they were blissfully unaware of the world outside their worlds.

Sahir spent most of his time with Amrita smoking one cigarette after another and when he felt it was time for him to go out and face the other world of reality , he left the stubs (the last ends of every cigarette) in the ash tray placed on the table by Amrita.They bid good  bye to each other aslo in an unusual kind of silence which was like a complete book of poems written in silences by both of them.I as a lover can now feel how they must have parted and the feelings that pulsated in their hearts and minds and celebrated their love in their eyes and the endless memories of their silences...

And when Sahir finally left the "chaukat "of Amrita's house , Amrita came running back to the place where she spent her silences with Sahir and she first tried touching the ends of the cigarettes left in the ash tray by Sahir and touched them to her lips and this ritual of her love for Sahir became so intense that Amrita ,a girl who had been brought up in a family where smoking for girl was not only prohibited but was also considerd a sin, turned into a chain-smoker . It is said that in her autobiography ,

"raseedi tiket"she has written how she believed that by touching the ends of the cigarettes left by Sahir she could feel that she was touching and feeling the lips of Sahir . I have heard and read of hundreds of ways of expressing one's love , but I have still to know , read or listen to a love story were a lover expresses her love for her beloved like this ,a gesture I find to be divine.

Sahir and Amrita were not only great romantic poets , but were poets who gave expressions to the realities of life , the struggle for independence , the plight of the poor , the down trodden , the mazdoors and kisaan.

Circumstances forced Sahir to go to Lahore where he was not happy and came down to Bombay with the ambition of writing songs for the Hindi films of the post -partition days . And within a matter of years , Sahir was not only a known name in literary circles , but was also the most wanted and the highest paid song writer in Hindi films .

It was during this separation between the two lovers that there seemed to be a crack between the lovers and the worst was to happen was a story (or was it a rumour) about his having an affair with a play back singer.Amrita now had a handsome young painter , Imroz as her lover who genuinely took care of Amrita even though he knew about her love for Sahir ....

And Sahir finally died in Bombay when he was only 56 - years old and when the news of his death reached Amrita , she was in state of shock from which it is said she never really recovered and she lived the rest of her life as a renowned recluse ....

Like I always say , there is some power or divine force that has brought me in touch with greatness and great human being.... Amrita Pritam had been honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award and was being felicitated by the city of Bombay.I was there in the midst of a very large crowd at the Patkar Hall with people sitting on the walls and perched on the trees around the hall .I had never seen such a celebration for a writer or a poet.I also had the first opportunity to see and meet Imroz , Amrita's lover

That evening ,I wondered what Sahir Sahab would have felt , said and written about his beloved on her being loved by thousands and even lakhs of people

Aur aisi mohabbat ki daastaan kabhi kabhi likhi jaati hai or phir hamesha ke liye yaad reh jaati hai . Aaj agar mohabbat ko zinda rakhana hai toh Sahir or Amrita ki daastaan ko zinda rakhna hamare farz bhi hoga or apne aap par garv karana bhi hoga ki hamare zamane mein aise do mohabbat ke maseeha saans lete the jinki saanse aaj bhi hamare rooh mein ghar banaaye huye hai