Silences That Never Broke: Amrita, Sahir and Imroz
When Amrita Pritam first met Sahir Ludhiyanvi, it was at a mushayara, a poetry recital. Their eyes met, and love happened. A rather cinematic start to a love story that would never find the comforts of a cliched Bollywood romance. Amrita and Sahir’s love was a silent one. It was like that poem which had been silenced by a line drawn over it, it existed, but it did not need saying. Amrita writes in her poem “Ek Mulaqat”, that she dedicates to Sahir, of their love which could have existed only in these silences. In this meeting of lovers, where they quiver like a poem, and one half of which sits in one corner and the other half in another, does this meeting ever happen? Sahir and Amrita lived in different corners of the country and their love was like the torn pieces of the same poem, never together, never apart. “Saamne puri raat thi, par aadhi nazm ek kone mein simati rahi, aur aadhi nazm ek kone mein baithi rahi.”
Darkness and silence are synonymous to each other. They exist together. This night that Amrita writes about, is the necessary darkness for their love to exist. And this poem their love creates, must be denied of words which will shatter the silence their love is. Sahir who kept a dirty glass from which Amrita drank her tea when she visited him like his most prized possession and Amrita who collected and smoked from Sahir’s discarded cigarette stubs, these lovers had no need for words.
Then, perhaps, it is befitting that Amrita should find Imroz. A man who became an observer of this silent shrine. It is said that Amrita loved Sahir till the very end, and lived with Imroz who built a house for her like a devout builds his place of worship. Imroz loved Amrita, perhaps enough for the two to spend a lifetime together. In a poem that Amrita wrote probably for Imroz, she talks about returning to him in another life, in another form, like saying, this association doesn’t end with death.
“Main tujhe fir miloongi
Kahan ? Kis tarah ? Nahin jaanti
Shayad tere kalpana ki prerana bankar
Tere canvas par utroongi
Ya shayad tere canvas ke oopar
Ek rahasyamay lakeer bankar
Khamosh tujhe dekhti rahoongi”
In a time where everything has been confined within the shackles of meaning, it is hard to find a word that could contain the silence of the love which was nothing like we’ve ever heard before. Isn’t this how love was always supposed to be? Without words, beyond the burden of expectations, in its naked, raw, silent form?
Manjiri Indurkar is a writer-journalist and poet from New Delhi. Her hobbies include reading, writing and eating (food and words, equally).