SHAAYAD SAHIR AURTON KO AURAT SE ZYAADA JAANTE THE

I don't have to be related to my relatives, who anyway have not shown me any signs or feelings about being related to me - ALI PETER JOHN

But , I have some men and women who are not even distantly related to me, but are still very closely related to me.

Among my most favourite 'relatives' are K.A. Abbas, Devanand, Mohammad Rafi , Lata Mangeshkar, Dharmendra and if there is one man who I beleive is a part of me and so much like me, it is Sahir Ludhianvi.

When my first ever book, " Voices in turmoil" was released more than 50 years ago, some journalist who were present asked me Who my favourite poets were and they expected me to say Wordsworth, Keats , Byron and Shelley , but when I said Firaq Gorakhpuri, Faiz Ahmed Faiz , Qaifi Azmi and Sahir Ludhianvi, they didn't know what to ask me next. Most of them hd never heard of these names.

It is since that day that I have had a bond with Sahir which I cannot explain in words. I was thinking like him , I was believing in things like him , I was loving like him and even drinking like him.

It was such a strange coincidence or a plan made by destiny that I started working with K.A. Abbas as an assistant and I was more than delighted when I came to know that Sahir was a close friend of Abbas and visited Abbas regularly.

It was like a dream come true for me when I met him at a party at the Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay and I spent several minutes talking to him and in those few minutes, I knew Sahir very well, but little did I know that Sahir was an ocean and there was no limit to know Sahir because he was too many men in one man. I will keep writing about Sahir but now let me write about Sahir and the women in his life.

His mother, Sardar Begum was the deepest influence and inspiration in his life. She was married to an aristocrat who had several lives and Sardari Begum was one of that.

Her husband was a very cruel man and tortured his wife and son who was called Abdul Hayee.

The fight between the husband and wife led to Court and Sahir showed the first sign of being a rebel when he gave evidence against his father.

His mother became a single mother and looked after Sahir from Ludhiana to Lahore and to Bombay where Sahir became famous as a songwriter in hindi films and his mother didn't live long enough to see her only son become a legend.

Sahir was destined to be a lover and the first girl he fell in love with was Ishrat Kaur who studied with him in his school, but Sahir's going away to Lahore put an end to this love story . Was it calf love?

And there was the love story between Sahir and the renowned punjabi poetess and writer Amrita pritam.

It is difficult to say who loved whom more. Sahir was one of those lovers who didn't express his love in words, but only showed it through signs and suggestions.

The story of Sahir sitting in front of Anrita without talking a word and smoking endless number of cigarettes and leaving the stubs in the ashtray and how Amrita used to touch the stubs through her lips believing that she was touching Sahir's lips is very popular and is now apart of folklore.

In her autobiography, 'Raseedi ticket' ,Amrita has written about anecdotes and incidents that seem to say that she loved Sahir more than Sahir loved her.

Sahir got lost in the world of films and it was here that he met a singer who was still not so popular, Sudha Malhotra who is said to have loved so much that he wrote songs especially for her and even inspired her to score the music for one of his own favourite poems which became one of the most popular songs of those times and all times.

There are other stories about Sahir and his association with women,but they are all in the realm of rumours and gossip.

What Sahir felt about women can be realized from just one song he wrote for the film Sadhana , the first two lines of which are 'Aurat ne janam diya mardon ko, mardon ne usse bazaar diya'.

If you listen to his songs about the mother and the prostitute in films like pyaasa and Trishool, you will have to agree with me that Sahir knew more and felt more for a woman than women themselves.

He remained without getting married and sometimes when he used to get drunk he used to say, " acha hi hua ki humne shaadi nahi ki nahin toh uss moutrama ka kya hota jo mere saath shaadi karti".

ABHI TOH MAINE BAS ITNA HI BATAAYA HAI SAHIR KE BAARE MEIN. JAB MAIN UNKO POORI TARAH SE JAANOONGA TAB AUR BAATEIN BATAAOONGA.