That love story started like this
He was married at the age of six. He started writing at the age of 10. At the age of 16, his first book 'Amrit Laharen' was published. The girl, who was to be Amrita Pritam one day later. Which had to create a new definition of love, marriage, relationships and companionship in a conservative, backward and feudal country. To give new meaning. A new example had to be set. Whose love story was to be remembered for centuries to come. Writing for women is not easy anyway. Since then, if she is a married woman, a mother of two children and has been married at the age of six, then writing for her every day, every moment will be like a challenge. It was not easy for Amrita Pritam either.
That love story started like this
But she kept on defying every challenge, breaking every wall and taking a step every day. Amrita writes in her autobiography 'Rasidi Ticket', "There was a dream that there was a huge fort and people lock me in it. It is guarded outside. There is no door found inside. I keep groping the walls of the fort with my fingers, but no part of the stone walls melt. When I can't find any door after groping the whole fort, I try to fly with all my might. My arms feel so tight that I can't breathe." These lines are a witness to Amrita's self-struggle, which was deciding her life all this time.
1944 was the year. Amrita's age would have been 25 years then. India was not partitioned. India and Pakistan were one country. A big Mushaira was organized in Preet Nagar near Lahore. Amrita from Lahore and Sahir from Ludhiana had reached Preet Nagar to attend this Mushaira. Both of them met for the first time in that Mushaira. Sahir Ludhianvi of revolutionary mood and Amrita Pritam of romantic mood. Amrita gave heart to Sahir in the very first meeting. Sahir's heart had also fallen on Amrita, but he was not courageous enough to accept it.
As Amrita has also written in the ticket, "One of the biggest complexes of Sahir's life is that he is not handsome." Sahir's attitude towards love and women has never been smooth and confident. Even after becoming famous in Hindi cinema, earning name and wealth, that confidence never came in him. In the meeting held in Lahore that day, Amrita was enamored of Sahir and he also understood that Amrita was also giving him his heart, but neither of them said anything. Both sat around silently for hours. Words were silent, silence was talking. While leaving, Sahir caught Amrita with a song.
No one knows what that nazm was because in her autobiography, Amrita mentions that nazm, but does not write it. As if it was her aloneness, which she does not want to share with the world.
See the coincidence, the city where both of them started their love, the name of that place was also Preet Nagar. As if the universe itself was ready to write the script of this love story.
It is difficult to say why someone falls in love with someone. What is that wire, which sometimes gets tied with a single meeting in such a way that no storm, no difficulty can break that wire again.
The distance of the country and partition and love
After the first meeting in 1944, the love affair between the two started. Amrita used to write long letters to Sahir. Sahir's reply would come from the returning post. Intermittent meetings were also held. Amrita writes about Sahir in the receipt ticket – "He would quietly smoke a cigarette in my room. After half a drink, he would extinguish the cigarette and light a new cigarette. When he left, the smell of his smoked cigarettes would remain in the room. I would keep those cigarette butts handy and re-smuggle those butts alone. When I held him in my fingers, I felt that I was touching Sahir's hands. In this way, I also got addicted to smoking cigarettes.
After partition, Amrita moved to Delhi with her husband and Sahir reached Mumbai to try his luck. The wheel of time turned in such a way that Sahir earned a lot of name by writing songs in Hindi cinema. In 1949, Sahir's songs from the very first film became so popular that he never looked back.
Meanwhile, a series of letters and books continued between the two. Amrita performed the marriage against her will in her childhood till 1960. Her husband Pritam Singh had come to know about her love with Sahir. The ego of the Indian husband was hurt and anger was at its peak. When the suffocation increased so much that even breathing became difficult, Amrita left her husband's house and started living alone in a rented house in Delhi.
Meanwhile, another woman Sudha Malhotra came in Sahir's life. The distance between Sahir and Amrita started increasing. The movement of letters first decreased, then stopped. Amrita had left her husband, Prem had gone far away one day. It was during this time that Imroz came into his life. A man who, knowing that the woman he is in love with, is married to someone else, loves another man, he accepts to live and live with her. Not only to live and live, but he dedicated his whole life to that woman. Sitting behind on the scooter with Imroz, Amrita would write Sahir's name on Imroz's back with her fingers. He knew, but respected Amrita's love.
It is written from the biographers of Sahir that although many women came in Sahir's life, but no one could take the place of Amrita. He continued to love Amrita immensely throughout his life.
Writing her autobiography, Amrita repeatedly mentions Sahir in a very poetic and cryptic style, but never openly writes what was the reason for the distance coming in this relationship. Why did it happen that even after loving each other so much, their relationship could not turn into a real life relationship.
Trying to solve the riddle of love is like showing a mirror to the sun. Who knows when which story was being written in the tangled streets of man's mind. Be that as it may, the only achievement of this unfinished love story of Amrita and Sahir is that the trust in love remains intact. The story of which it is not possible to reach the end, that too is not less valuable. That beautiful turn, from where their paths parted, a song of love still remains there. Some vagabond passes through those streets even now, some sound still comes throughout the night.
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