Tags:
Journalism of Courage
I last met her more than ten years ago. When I heard a few days ago that she had passed away I saw her alive 8212; sitting with me, holding both my hands in hers and smiling, with her whole face, particularly her eyes. The fact that I will not see her any more has not yet struck me. She remains indelible in my imagination and in my heart.
I had first met her in the late eighties. She had sought me out for an interview. Why me, I asked her. 8220;Because you matter to me,8221; she had said. The next day I was in her home, having a vegetarian lunch she had cooked herself, served by her silent friend, Imroz. I felt she was a friend I had lost and regained.
I was deeply moved by her question, more a statement of her own poetry, the way she lived, perceived and felt the world around her. I never answered her question but it has stayed with me. Every time we met, Amrita gave me a new sense of who I am. I found her open, so full of knowing, so ready to share. But she never discussed Imroz.
Once I commented on the lamp shades in her drawing room. They were calligraphed with shades of pastel shades. They are painted by Imroz, she said. When he joined us for lunch later I remember asking him why he did not sign his name on them. 8220;I want to be like a folk song which anyone can sing,8221; he muttered. 8220;It has no name, no signature, no possession, no royalty.8221;
Listening to him I knew Amrita had met her soul-mate. You are like Anais Nin, the French writer I once told her. 8220;To write means to give all 8212; not to withhold, but to give all8221;, she wrote in one of her Diaries, mapping out a vast territory of the female consciousness. 8220;It is like love, the more you spend of it, the more you stir new energies, new sources. To hold back is an activity which withers, inhibits and ultimately kills the seeds.8221; That was the way I felt Amrita was. She believed in the ancient ideal that a writer gathers knowledge with two hands and gives it away with a thousand.
A few days after she passed away I met Khushwant Singh, he dismissed the way I felt about her. He knew her when she was a young girl, a pretty girl, daughter of a simple pracharak around Lahore. She used to write poetry and came to be lauded. Then she was married to the son of a well-known hosiery shopkeeper. They moved to Delhi. The marriage did not work. She asked him for a divorce. He gave it to her, along with three children. 8220;I once asked her to tell me how many men had made love to her. She told me, just one, and he had a difficult time doing it. That was the poet Sahir Ludhianvi. She has not written anything worthwhile except Pinjar, that I have translated,8221; he said between short laughs.
I laughed with him. But when I left his house I felt sad. What he had told me were some of the major events that made her life 8212; not the memory of one of his chats with her. He perhaps met her with his own image of her. When I met her I did not know her, nor read her. My image grew with every meeting. She remains indelible. There will never be another Amrita Pritam.
