Down the 100-mile road: The legend of Amrita Pritam lives on

CHANDIGARH Path-breaking Punjabi poet Amrita Pritam (1919-2005), who also wrote prose and edited a literary magazine, enjoyed immense popularity in her lifetime,

CHANDIGARH Path-breaking Punjabi poet Amrita Pritam (1919-2005), who also wrote prose and edited a literary magazine, enjoyed immense popularity in her lifetime, which has only amplified after her death. In the 100th birth year of the writer, who did her language proud, celebrations of her life and writings have been going on spontaneously in different parts of the country and not just Punjab.

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She occupied the pride of place with Bangla poet Subhash Mukhopadhay and Urdu poet Kaifi Azmi at a national seminar at Calcutta University in celebration of the three major poets born in 1919. While the Jaipur Literature Festival had done a phenomenal ‘Hamari Amrita’ session some years ago, last year saw Khushwant Singh Literary Festival at Kasauli and the Majha House at Amritsar curating memorable sessions on the inimitable poet.

Not just institutions, individuals too came forward to commemorate her memory with Gurdaspur-based Beeba Balwant, a writer of her journal ‘Nagmani’, saving money from his pension to institute an annual the Amrita-Imroz Award. The award in the memory of Amrita and her artist partner Imroz is to be given to writers and poets. The first one was presented to senior Punjabi poet Mohanjit at the Ludhiana Sahitya Akademi on August 30. The list of such gestures is a long one.

PERSONAL TO UNIVERSAL

Commenting on this amazing adulation given to the poet, Haryana Urdu Akademi chairman Chander Trikha, already planning a commemorative symposium, says: “We know of such adoration for poets of the past like Kabir or Ghalib, cutting across languages and creeds, but no other Indian poet born in the century received the high regard that Amrita has got. This was because Amrita was able to touch intrinsic human sensitivity through her writings. No one has written the personal as she did while imbibing in it the universal.”

Indeed, Amrita has many firsts to her credit. She was the first woman writer to win the Sahitya Akademi award in 1957 and the first Punjabi writer to get the coveted Jnanpith Award in 1982. Besides, she had many other honours and accolades home. Her legacy of 100 books includes varied genres like poetry, fiction, biography and essays. As an editor, she nurtured two generations of Punjabi writers to look at life anew and introduce them to the world literature.

Come August and people recall the turbulent history of the sub-continent: Independence, Partition and Amrita. This is so because she was the poet to pen the first dirge to the horrors of the divide: ‘Ajj Aakhan Waris Shah Nu’ (Waris Shah today I call out to You), a poem which, according to columnist-writer Khushwant Singh ‘made her immortal in both India and Pakistan’.

HIGH PRIESTESS OF LOVE

A woman’s right to live and love was played out in her life and writings. Her admirer and associate, veteran theatre person Rani Balbir Kaur says, “She had no artifice and she gave voice to the voiceless. Therein lay her strength!” Punjabi poet Paul Kaur adds, “She made it easier for us who came after her to speak out our truth.”

While many celebrations outside, her partner for over four decades Imroz (94) will cut a birthday cake with Amrita’s family and a few close friends at their Delhi home to mark her 100-mile road. For him, ‘Amrita always is and not was’ and true enough for she lives forever in her words.