How Imroz’s love built Amrita Pritam, as a woman and a poet
His passing is not just the loss of a talented artist — it is akin to losing Amrita all over again
Once, in a conversation about Amrita Pritam and her live-in partner, painter and poet Imroz, Gulzar narrated a story that defined their 45-year-long relationship. The poet and filmmaker, who had known them separately and together, spoke of Imroz always addressing Amrita as “Madam” — whether he was talking to her or about her.
It was a fascinating and endearing way of acknowledging the seniority of one’s beloved — Amrita was seven years older to Imroz — in a love story marked by deep respect, admiration and devotion. In private letters, he addressed her as Maaja, the name of the heroine in a Spanish novel they had both read, and sometimes as Aashi. But “madam” remained Imroz’s preferred way of referring to Amrita till his death last week, at 97, in Mumbai.
After her death in 2005, her impressive oeuvre kept Amrita alive. But if she has endured among us, it has also been through Imroz’s ruminations of her. Once, in a conversation about a book featuring their letters to each other, Imroz told me, “We never used the term ‘love’ or that we loved each other. It was too empty an expression”.
Imroz’s passing is not just the loss of a talented artist — it feels like we have lost Amrita all over again. Amrita, the courageous writer whose unflinching look at sexuality and constant quest for liberation and self-realisation was almost unheard of when she began writing. In her world, a woman was meant to live out her desires, with dignity. It was a world that included not just her characters — but her as well.
Here was a married woman, a mother, writing of being in love with another man, poet Sahir Ludhianvi, speaking of smoking the half-smoked cigarettes he left behind in her house and how, throughout her pregnancy, she hoped her baby would look like him, even though it was her husband Pritam Singh’s child. Female desire was never this prominent in Indian literature.
What Amrita felt for Sahir – the longing, the need to be with him all the time — Imroz felt for her. Born Indarjeet Singh in Layallpur (now Faisalabad in Pakistan), he was an illustrator with the famed Urdu magazine, Shama, when he met Amrita to discuss designing her book covers. She was married and in love with Sahir when she began living with Imroz in the late ’50s. The two also brought out the Punjabi magazine Nagmani together.
Sahir, a complicated man and Amrita’s muse, could not give space to love and commitment in his life. While she yearned for a response from him, actual solace and comfort came from Imroz, who not only understood her affections for Sahir but treated them with dignity.
Imroz didn’t chide her for tracing Sahir’s name on his back when she sat on his scooter, or when she wrote “Aaj mera khuda mar gaya”, when Sahir died in 1980 due to a sudden cardiac arrest. Instead, he was waking up in the middle of the night, when Amrita felt most comfortable writing,
preparing a cup of tea, and keeping it beside her as she worked. If Amrita sat in her Hauz Khas home with her guests, Imroz would often bring a tray of tea and biscuits. Unlike most men, he never felt awkward about it. Imroz stood like a rock by her in Amrita’s last years, brought up her children with her, and even looked after her ailing husband Pritam Singh in their house till he breathed his last.
One might wonder if this disregard for what’s considered normal came from the space that made their creativity possible. And the answer was invariably yes. Imroz’s passionate and unconditional affection led Amrita to ask once in a letter, “Raahi, tum mujhe sandhya bela mein kyun mile, milna tha toh dopeher mein milte,
Uss dopeher ka sek toh dekh lete (O passer by, why did you meet me during life’s dusk, if you had to meet me, it should have been in the afternoon, at least then we would have seen the afternoon’s warmth)”. It felt as if only an Imroz could love Amrita Pritam; their kinship was like a sacred song – tender, with great meaning, and deeply spiritual.
“Main ek lok geet (I’m a folk song)” – Imroz once wrote about himself. And, as usual, he got to the heart of the matter in an instant: A man not in any need of acknowledgement of his authorship (he never signed his paintings), but someone who was content flowing like a song, travelling like a river. That was Imroz — secure, devoted and in love with Amrita, something, I believe, that helped build her as a woman and as a writer.
As a tribute to their relationship, Gulzar wrote, Teri nazm se guzarte waqt khadsha rehta hai/ Paanv rakh raha hoon jaise geele canvas par Imroz ke/ Teri nazm se image ubharti hai/ Brush se rang tapakne lagta hai/ Woh apne kore canvas par nazme likhta hai/ Tum apne kaagzon par nazme paint karti ho (While passing through your poem, I fear/ that I’m stepping onto Imroz’s wet canvas/ An image emerges from your poem/ Colour drips off the brush/He writes a poem on his blank canvas/ You, on your paper, lend colours to poems).
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