Journey of Amrita Pritam

Romance! One wonders if there is anyone, known somewhere, who hasn’t had a taste of it. Well, of course, there is one difference: some have had it better than others. This makes us think of Amrita Pritam who lived a life of love and loved longing all her life in many different ways. Many call her a flag bearer of the broken heart. Rightly so! At sixteen, she published her first collection of poetry Amrit Lehrein – The Immortal Waves– which was, as the name suggests, a book of poems on love and romance.

Born as Amrita Kaur, this young girl lost her mother at the age of eleven. Like many of us who seek companionship through writing, Amrita too started writing to escape her loneliness. Sufferings produce great writers and Amrita had enough of these for her share: she lost her mother, got into a sour marriage, experienced the horrors of the Partition, and fell for one who would never take her along. So, when she held her pen, she made an impact instantly. She was appropriately designated as a “feminist before feminists”.

Much has been talked of and heard about Amrita’s love for Sahir Ludhianvi, the accomplished Urdu poet. She bared it all in public through her Raseedi Ticket. Irrespective of what it amounted to, she never gave up on her love for him. One may justifiably surmise that Sahir did love her, but never had the courage to confront the world. Amrita gave him her heart and soul, and in return got a complex life of inexplicable emotions. To that woman who survived this hardship, one may only quote Fehmida Riyaz’s translation of Amrita Pritam:

Thankfully, life was not all heartbreak for Amrita. There was Imroz to hold her. He loved and revered her, and gave her the importance that she deserved. On her birthday, he wrote to her: “With the bright suns of all 365 days, I raise a toast to this day, the 31st of August, 1967, and to your existence, along with all the suns of a half a century and to all the suns of the coming century”.

If one was to define Amrita Pritam’s journey in this world, one would simply say: “Love with Sahir, Marriage with Singh, Life with Imroz”. Her life with Sahir was a legend, with Singh a hard truth, and with Imroz an elegy. Here is an imaginary letter written to Amrita which probably translates the emotions that many hold for her but do not express:

Dear Amrita,

Thank you for inspiring us to connect than keep smothering. Thanks for helping us to speak up than cringe inside. We are forever indebted to you as readers, and even/ever more as human beings. Come back again. Until then, here is wishing you a Happy Birthday!

Shukriya!

Love Life of Momin Khan Momin (1800-1851)

Poetry and love go together. Poets are known to make friends but they make better friends with those who inhabit their imagination. No doubt, they are the beloveds– both imaginary and real–since they are worthy of all attention and subject of all adoration. The image of the beloved is probably better reflected in Urdu poetry, especially when the beloved is a real one. And Momin’s beloveds were real. He is one poet who explored love in two of its facets–as a spiritualist and as a romanticist. He saw no contradiction in them which is what makes him an interesting person and a fascinating poet.

Momin was a handsome man, and also colorful by nature. With this fatal combination, he could easily charm women. But it was not the women alone who got drawn towards him; it was he too who found his way with them. In a life of fifty-one years, Momin came across at least five women at different stages of his life. Better than keeping them veiled in metaphoric terms in his poetry, as poets often do, he celebrated his love with his beloveds in open terms and represented himself both as a lover and a beloved. That was something unique to his poetry.

Momin fell first in love at the age of fifteen. As the story of this adolescent love spread, he stopped mentioning her in his shers fearing a bad name for himself and for her. The story was cut short as death laid its cruel hand on her. Momin, the sentimental youth learning the lessons of life, lamented her loss but time put a balm on his bruised heart in due course. He narrated this story of his first love in his first masnawi Shikayat-e Sitam. It is an early work but a genuine record of his emotional turmoil suffered at a young age.

As time passed and Momin reconciled with his fate, he came across his second love. The story goes that he chanced to look at her at the terrace and fell in that proverbial “love at the first sight” with her. He was then spotted meeting her at times. The grapevine did not take time to travel around. He was admonished at home and strictly advised to keep himself in check. When Momin maintained certain distance from her, the young lady felt rejected and turned hostile. Badly shaken by this, Momin chose to defy the imposed norms of his family and went to meet her and win her over but it did not work. This bitter experience of sacrificing his love to maintain the given social norms, gave him the material for his second masnawi Qissa-i-gham. 

The story of Momin’s third love relates with an unexpected meeting with a young lady. Once, he was on a walk when the young lady looked at him and made gestures from the window to call him. He was both stunned and amused. He found it strange that she should have beckoned so unreservedly and could not well understand how to respond. But he went up to meet her which made way for their subsequent meetings in a row. This young lady was called Ummat-ul Fatima and with whom he developed a deeper relationship at the young age of twenty. Supposedly she was indisposed and had come to Delhi to receive her treatment from a hakeem. Momin was a hakeem and this was the most opportune time for him to make friends with her. As they met, their friendship grew and patient and the hakeem both fell love-sick. It is surmised that she was a poet and chose the pen name of Sahib at Momin’s asking. Being enamoured by this lady, Momin made her the subject of one of his ghazals and addressed her as “sahib”.

It is said that Ummat-ul Fatima had come from Lucknow and was a prostitute. When the story of their relationship spread out, she developed a cold feet and suddenly left for Lucknow. This put Momin to great pain. He wrote about this love story yet another masnawi Qaul-e Ghameen.

Momin stayed rejected and forlorn for long. His fate took yet another turn when he happened to be a guest at a wedding where he met a beautiful lady. He was enamoured by her and developed a soft corner in his heart for her. When the wedding celebrations got over, there came the time for the lady to leave. While leaving, she asked Momin not to try and keep in touch with her, not even write her a letter, as restrictions at her home would not allow any communication to reach her. This brought suffering to Momin and he fell ill. It is interesting that when Momin recovered from this craving for her, he received a letter from her where she had expressed her desire to meet him. This was much too unexpected. However, they met but their hearts could not. This story of his fourth unrequited love became the subject of yet another masnawi Tuf-e Aatesheen.

When Momin, the hakeem, got a beloved as a patient; Momin, the astrologer, got another as an admirer of his astrological skill. This time he met a lady who expressed her desire to know about her future. Love has hardly ever gone without a jealous guarding it closely. When the lady who was the subject of his masnawi Tuf-e Aatesheen came to know about this new-found love of Momin, she turned spiteful and frowned furiously. Love has not been known to have prospered if there was a triangle. This fifth love had to end and die its natural death. Momin lived to love and loved to live but he could not have luck with any of his beloveds. The poet in him did not let him forget all his disappointments. He wrote about his sufferings in Feen-e Maghmoom.

 

Momin was respected as a poet, a hakim, an astrologer, and a gentleman. He could not have made compromises with his social prestige. And he did not do that. He remains an iconic poet who did not let his love-life go as a story of the past. He immortalised each one of them in his masnawis and ghazals and we recall them when we fall or fail in love.

Love-life of Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938)

Thinking of Mohammad Iqbal is thinking of one with many distinctions to his credit. Being a poet, philosopher, barrister, academic, and political thinker with a knighthood to his credit made him special in many ways. All these distinguished identities qualified him to be widely celebrated as the “Poet of the East”, “Hakim-ul-Ummat”, and “National Poet of Pakistan”. Thinking of Mohammad Iqbal is also thinking of an individual who lived an uneasy life. He could be anyone’s envy for his qualities but fate did not choose him kindly for his love-life. Many who wrote on his life have invariably written about his relationship with a lady called Atia Fiazi. The accounts vary as some are too romanticized and others merely speculative.Getting to know of her intellectual worth, Iqbal went to meet Atia in Cambridge. He was naturally drawn towards this graceful and intelligent lady. They discussed issues and grew intimate over a period of time. This led Iqbal’s biographers to draw their own conclusion about their relationship. One cannot, however, say for sure if Iqbal was only infatuated by her, or he was really in love with her. One may better suggest that the beauty of their bonding lay in its mystery, or its indefinability to be precise.

Getting to know of her intellectual worth, Iqbal went to meet Atia in Cambridge. He was naturally drawn towards this graceful and intelligent lady. They discussed issues and grew intimate over a period of time. This led Iqbal’s biographers to draw their own conclusion about their relationship. One cannot, however, say for sure if Iqbal was only infatuated by her, or he was really in love with her. One may better suggest that the beauty of their bonding lay in its mystery, or its indefinability to be precise. A page from her diary may be an indicator of the nature of their relationship. She wrote that one day she called on him with friends and teachers to take him along for a picnic. Reaching there, she found Iqbal in a state of deep meditation. It seemed as if he had been in this state for a long time. They tried to shake him up but without success. Finding no other way, Atia decided to send them all out of the room and make her own effort and bring him back to a normal state. She went physically close to him and shook him so vigorously that he came back to his senses. One may leave it at speculation if this was their bosom friendship, or romantic intimacy with each other that made it happen.

Iqbal and Atia remained friends for long. When Iqbal returned to India after completing his education in Europe, he remained unhappy and passed through a phase of emotional crisis because of domestic issues and traditional environment around. He kept thinking of her and continued writing intimate letters. In one of his letters, he spoke uninhibitedly against his frustration with life. He mentioned that his father had put him in a marital bond at an early age which brought him much distress as he could not relate with his wife in any possible way.

Atia sent a sympathetic response to Iqbal and advised him to seek counselling from his close friends and get their help. Instead of doing this, he kept on sharing his miseries with her but without ever finding a solution. In sharing these sentiments with Atia, he was indeed showing his deep fascination for her who could no longer keep company except writing to him in sympathy. In 1911, he wrote to Atia that some of his poems during the past five years were mostly of autobiographical nature. Finding himself helpless and unable to retain his relationship with his wife, Iqbal decided to marry a lady called Sardari Begum. Soon after their wedding, Iqbal started receiving anonymous letters about this lady which painted her in bad light. Without caring to consider these letters calmly, he impulsively chose to divorce her and continue with his suffering.

A little later, Iqbal received a proposal regarding his marriage with Mukhtar Begum of Ludhiana. Since his sister had praised her no end, Iqbal agreed to marry her even without meeting her. When the bride came to Lahore and Iqbal saw her, he was utterly flabbergasted. This lady was not as beautiful as she was descrobed to be by his sister. Iqbal was much too disappointed but he could not do anything except suffering the onslaughts of his fate. Iqbal was yet to recover from this shock when he received a letter from his second wife, Sardari Begum. She had written that she was still hoping that he would someday take him again as his wife. She also wrote that if he did not do so, she would remain unmarried all her life. She had wondered how could he take rumours about her so as truth and take an impulsive decision even while being such a remarkable poet and intellectual.

Going through her letter, Iqbal felt guilty and ashamed of himself. He felt all the more remorseful when he came to know that those libellous letters were written by a local lawyer who wanted his son to be married to Sardari Begum. Iqbal spoke with his well-wishers who said that they knew Sardari Begum’s family quite well and that she was a sensible lady of sound character. Iqbal realised that he had been too much in a hurry, too sentimental, and too unreasonable to have divorced her and married thrice without due consideration. Realizing that he was utterly wrong and disrespectful to Sardari begum, he wanted to get her back in his life but did not know how to do that as he had already divorced her. He sought advice from those with knowledge of sharia laws. He was told that as per the provisions of halala, if a man divorces his wife and wants to re-marry the same lady at a later date, he cannot do so unless the divorced wife enters into a marital and physical relationship with another man and then gets a divorce from him. This perturbed Iqbal. He then approached another religious scholar who advised that the condition of halala was not applicable to his case as he had not spent a night of union with Sardari Bagum. Being totally shaken, Iqbal thought to recompense for his doing and chose to enter into yet another nikah with her. This was Sardari Begum’s second and Iqbal fourth nikah.

Interestingly enough, it was at this point that his first wife Kariman Bibi came to Lahore with her two sons to live with him which caused him further distress. This was a very traumatic phase in Iqbal’s life. It so happened one day that Kariman Bibi’s mother dropped in and blamed Iqbal for his mis-demeanour. In anger, she took her daughter and her children back with her. It appears that Iqbal chose to strike peace at last. He remained satisfied in his relationship with Sardari Begum. On the other hand, Sardari Begum being a level-headed lady could sense well that Iqbal was a very successful philosopher and poet but he was not such a responsible husband. This was rather dismaying for her. Iqbal lived a successful life as a philosopher and poet but not so much as a family man. Indeed, poets and intellectuals live and die differently. Iqbal was one of them.

Never heard before couplets of Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Faiz Ahmad Faiz was among the most celebrated and popular poets of Urdu. He faced political repression for his revolutionary views. He is acknowledged as a torchbearer of progressivism and modernism in Urdu poetry. Here are five couplets of Faiz that you may not have heard of or read before. You may read them below:

Love-afflicted I lay, why don’t you bring me a cure

What a healer are you, heal me for I adjure

I’m a lazy one, I’m not a Farhad
Who else in this city of dead than I

One may, or may not get, the desired wine in hell
But one would get rid of the counselor at least

Life is but a poor man’s cloak where one
Keeps sewing it with patches of pain

He’s coming; he’ll come; he’s on his way
Awake did I stay all the night for my day