Guftagu

The Poet of All Moments

2009-03-13T01:34:00.000-07:00

Taj Mahal
Taj tere liye mazhare-ulfat
Hi sahi,
Tujhko is vadiye-rangin se
Akidat hi sahi,
Meri mehboob kahin aur
Mila kar mujhse,
Bazme-shahi mein gharibon
Ka guzar kya mani?
--Sahir Ludhianvi

``Aah! Sahir Ludhianvi,'' say banners at various spots in Ludhiana and these have been painted by his old friend Painter Bawrie, who once roamed the streets of the city with Sahir in the first flush of their youth. Ludhiana remembers its poet as Ludhiana is being remembered by many because of the poet. Abul Haye (Sahir's real name) was born on March 8, 1921. Just a year after the Government College of Ludhiana was born. He enrolled himself in the college on a hot summer day of May 1937 filling the form with a sensitive and delicate handwriting. In the form, which is still preserved in the college records, he stated in the column – which profession he would like to take up --``law''. Well, Sahir certainly became the advocate for the people's emotions and dreams for a better tomorrow:
Jis subah ki khatir jug-jug se ham sab mar-markar jeete hain jis subah ke amrit ki dhun mein ham zehar ke pyale peete hain
Who subah na aaye aaj magar, who subah kabhi to aayegi.
He wanted to disinherit the system, which would aid the foreign rule for the comforts of life:
Main un ajdad ka beta hoon
jinhone patham,
ajnabi kaum ke saye ki himayat
ki jai,
ghadar ki sayate-napakse lekar
ab tak.
Har karhe want mein sarkar ki
Khidmat ki hai.
It was on him on him to make amends for the betrayal by his forefathers. If they had let down the people their descendant would not and this commitment broke out in violent social protest in his verses. The first seeds were sown by a personal love for a girl of a different religion. A love which in those days could never hope to find a destination. But this love went beyond the personal tragedy which allows the romantic vision to imagine it as a paradisial pit. Love for him with his progressive cut look became the emotion of all social relations. Sahir had inherited a whole tradition of Urdu poetry and when Sahir blossomed as a poet Iqbal, Firak, Faiz and Majaz had already made a name for themselves. It would be impossible to envisage that Sahir remained uninfluenced by them. If Faiz had said ``Aur bhi gham hain zamane mein mohabbat kesiva'' we have from Sahir -- ``Tumhare gham ke siva aur bhi to ghum hain mujhe''. But Sahir cannot be accused of voicing an unfelt emotion and his personal experiences authenticate feelings. What brought his ``talkhian'' Published on inferior newsprint instant recognition was his ``andaze byan''. Here was a poet with a down-to-earth approach intermingling with his romantic vision and the words handpicked as it was. And there was a boldness which at that time would have needed great courage. Painter Bawrie recalled, ``I read the poem and was overwhelmed by the fact that here was a man calling a prostitute the daughter of
"Havva Yashodha and Zulekha''.
Among the early years of Sahir as a poet, his friends were Painter Bawrie. Harkrishan lal, Ajaib Chitrakar, Madanlal Didi, Mohan Sehzal.,Hamid Akhtar, Ghulam Murtaza and Faiz-ul-Hasan. There were the long evening walks the discussions and poetry in the evening culminating with a cup of tea at the railway station. Incidentally, Sahir those days got a rupee daily as pocket money. It is less if you go by his jagirdar background but more than enough for those days. One day when they were sipping tea they saw the railway station contractor beating up an employee mercilessly. They stopped him and went to the police chowki to file a report but the contractor was more powerful and the whole lot were in the lockup for a night for ``taking the law in their own hands!''
On the notice board of the college are written the lines from the poem ``Nazare-college'', which Sahir wrote when he was expelled or rather asked to migrate from the college. His sins were perhaps those of love and poetry, progressive at that, Sahir writes about it with the generosity which comes only when we have risen above our petty prejudices. But the irony is there:
Yahin seekha tha phan-e-nagmagari
Yahin utra she’r ka ilham
Main Jahan raha yahin ka raha
Mujhko bhoole nahin yeh darobaam
Ham inhi fizaon ke pale hue to hain
Gar yank ke nahin yan se nikale hue to hain.
It was years later when the college celebrated its Golden Jubilee that Sahir came. The college gave gold medals to two friends – who were born on the same day, same time, samecity, both remained bachelors but one was taken away by death. They were Sahir Ludhianvi and Harkrishan Lal, the world famous artist, who is in Ludhiana these days and shattered by the death of a friend with whom he remained in close with who he remained in close association till the end. Harkrishan lal recalled that Sahir had been the one to tell him of the death of the death of Shiv Kumar Batalvi. Sahir was sitting with Jaidev and other friends when Harkrishan walked in Sahir said ``he has become a star'', taking one from the celebrated poem of Shiv ``Joban rutte bhi marta phul bane ya tara.'' When Harkrishan asked who, Sahir replied. ``Wohi Shiv, phhol ban gaya hoga ya tara. Ham to mareinge to karele ke phool hi bane, Kyon ki jawani mein nahin marne wale.'' After his mother's death, Harkrishan said, Sahir was a broken man. She had been the motivating source of his life.
Sahir said to Harkrishan Lal, ``My home is like a hotel now. It is no longer a home.'' And one cannot stay indefinitely in a hotel! Sahir's home in Ludhiana was no longer his, the house which had seen Sahir pen down his first lines. Sahir was forced by circumstances to go to Lahore after partition where his mother was. But when he returned a year later, his house had been declared evacuee property and allotted to someone else. Now the owner of the house is in Canada and is wanting to sell it. The admirers of Sahir are trying that the Government should acquire it and turn to into a memorial.
Sahir never married and got a wife who would have turned any house into a home. Thus his palatial bungalow in Bombay named ``Parchhaiyan'', after his long poem too remained a hotel. It was not that love did not come his way again. Many women loved him. Love came to him to the form of pure devotion, musical overtones and poetic passion. Sahir too returned the love but some psychological barrier prevented him from taking love to the destination of marriage. Later one could see in his poems a faint regret:
Kisi ki ho ke to is tarhan mere
Ghar aaye!
Ki jaise phir kabhi aaye to
Ghar mile na mile''
``Yeh jaan kar tujhe kya jaane kitna gham pahunche
Ki aaj tere khayalon mein kho
Gaya hoon main.
Sahir was committed to the society. His friend Krishan Adeeb recalled that not only he but many joined the Communist Party in the early forties after reading the poems of Sahir. But for Sahir it remained only an ideological commitment, he could not become an active worker. Perhaps, he realized his limitations:
Tumse kuvvat lekar main
Tumkoraah dikhiaoonga
Tum parcham lehrana saathi
Main barbat par gaoonga.
Kaifi Azmi felt that this condition in Sahir led to the melancholy in his life. But even singing on the ``barbat'' is not without merit and the role of the intellectual lies in creating an awareness though he may not be able to join the fray.
Some consider Sahir's entry into the film world a loss to poetry. But with Sahir the complexion of film songs changed and he became a significant literary influence on the film industry, though not losing his progressive outlook. He always wrote less but the promise which he showed in the beginning was kept to the end. Much later he gave us poems like:
Khoon apna ho ya parya ho
Nasle-aadam ka khoon hai
Akhir...
This he wrote in the contest of the 1965 Indo-Pak war and his poem on the Ghalib centenary has him at his ironical best:
Gandhi ho ki Galib ho,
Insaf isnazaron mein
Ham dono kekatil hain, dono
Ke pujari hain.
Sahir's death is, no doubt, a loss but one does not mourn a death when the poet leaves to much of life in his poetry. Sahir himself said:
Na muhn chhupa ke jiye ham,
Na sar jhuka ke jiye
Sitamgaron ki nazar se nazar
Milakejiye.
Abe k raat agar kam jiye, to
Kam hi sahi
Yahi bahut hai ke mashale
jala ke jiye
Sahir will remain with us. We will remember him in so many ways, so many times. Every time we hear on the radio his song''
Main pal do palka shair hoon'',
We will remember him as the poet of all moments.

Writers' Writer

2009-01-15T06:09:00.000-08:00

Those days of Nirmal Verma

Nirupama Dutt
Nirmal Verma is another Punjabi writer who has made significant contribution to Hindi fiction. Punjab has given many writers to the world of Hindi letters – Upendra Nath Ashk, Bhisham Sahni, Mohan Rakesh and Krishan Baldev Ved are a few names who have towered over. The Hindi literary scene.
The contribution of Nirmal Verma to contemporary Hindi fiction has been remarkable. He brought a breath of fresh air to Hindi literature and his stories and novels have shown him as a sensitive writer probing the human psyche and viewing human relationships from a new angle.
In the city recently on his way back to Delhi from Manikaran, Nirmal Verma said in an interview that his writings were an attempt to explore the truthfulness and authenticity in personal relationships of the Indian middle class, which he found half emancipated by the influence of the West and half buried in our own ancient traditions.
Though Nirmal's father belonged to Patiala, most of Nirmal's childhood was spent in the Simla Hills. He was never able to give up the fascionation for the hills and he later relived his childhood experiences in his second novel ``Laal Tin Ki hhat''. After having done his M.T.A. in history from St. Stephen's College, he taught for a while. Having an interest for literature, Nirmal started reviewing Hindi novels for an English daily, Reading and reviewing Hindi fiction, he chose it as his medium for creative expression.

Looking back at his youth spent in Karol Bagh, he said, ``We had a group called `Cultural Forum' and we would meet once a week and read out our stories to each other. Some of the writers of our group are now very wellknown. Our forum had among others Bhisham Sahni, Krishan Baldev Ved, Ram Kumar and Manohar Sham. We were sensitive and naïve but we would put attack each others stories with a ruthless and almost cruel criticism.''
The first stories of Nirmal Verma were published in literary magazine like `Kalpana' and `Kahani' his first collection of short stories `Parinde' was published in 1959. In the same year Nirmal went for an advanced course in contemporary Czech literature at Oriental institute in Prague. He stayed there for seven years and later lived in London and Europe for a long period.
It is said of Nirmal Verma that he brought a new phenomenon to Hindi letters – studying the tensions of the relationships in the West, a world very different from ours. His Prague experience led to the very sensitive novel `Weh Din' which has been translated into English byt Ved with the little of `Days of Longing'. When asked how he was inspired to weave the ways of the west in his stories, Nirmal replied, ``In my collection of stories `Pichhli Garmion Mein' I chose many themes from the west and depicted life in a milieu alien to me. It was essentially the concern of an Indian writer trying to grapple with a culture which offered more exposure in individual terms. In our culture many relationships are thwarted by external factors like customs, traditions and family. In the west there is more freedom to work our emotional relationships on an individual level and yet see them coming to their own logical and bitter end''.

In 1980, Nirmal Verma went back to the Delhi of the sixties where he had spent his youth and blossomed as a writer and wrote his novel `Ek chithhra Sukh'. It is the story of the young people the artists, writers and ideologists who are hungry to seek out experiences and look for just a tatter of authenticity. It tells of a generation idealistic about their role in a free India and the shattering of their dreams
Three of Nirmal Verma's stories `Weekend'. `Dedh Inch Oopar' were dramatized by the national school of drama under the title of teen ekant'. These plays were staged in the city by a local group. These three stories are written in monologue. Kumar Shahani has filmedhis story `Maya Darpan'. When asked how did he find writing novels for he is essentially a master of the short story, he said ``A novel requires more work and I find it a taxing job. In a short story I work out the frame in my mind and I knjow how I am going to put it down on paper. But in a novel, which has a much wider canvas. I start writing and sometimes the situations turn out very different from what I intended them to be''.
Recently he had done more non-fiction work – travelogues and essays. But he is working on a novel of which he says it is too early to talk yet.

Tale of two Coutries

2009-01-01T11:39:00.000-08:00

War And Verse

The strange saga of animosity between India and Pakistan is not without strong bonds of shared language, literature and culture. Will these bonds survive the clouds of suspicion that hang heavy after Kargil, asks Nirupama Dutt

GULZAR: ``For the third generation, Pakistan will be Pakistan and India will be India. It will last as long as the memory of grandparents lasts.''

JAVED AKHTAR ``The Indian Muslims have reiterated their stand against the two-nation theory. It is for the other side to come out and say so too, for nations should not be based on religion.''

When guns fire, solders die and the wall of mourners pierces the overcast sky in Kargil, it certainly is not the time to write poetry. The brave do not write poetry. They die and they are dead: so said Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. Then one doesn't really write poetry on sad days: a sentiment expressed in verse by a prominent Hindi poet known for his political poetry, Kumar Vikal. When the brave die and the days are sad, one looks desperately for a line of poetry to hold on to as one hold son to life. It could be a soothing verse from the scriptures or an Urdu couplet accompanying the photograph of a young soldier in an obituary notice in a newspaper. Or a marching song, which the sad father recalls at his son's funeral, of flowers blooming where martyrs fall.

Poetry infiltrates with a difference. It comes bringing hope, peace and love. Poetry is not propaganda and it runs far deeper than patriotism, even though poets are often pressed into the service of the nation. A Gulzar giving his poetic message on the radio to soldiers in Kargil or a Javed Akhtar addressing people at Aye Watan Tere Liye, a starry nite organized in the Capital. But this they do in their individual capacity as citizens. When they turn to writing poetry, humanity replaces geographical considerations.

Petry knows not the division of ours and theirs. The dawn of Independence that broke upon India and Pakistan was sullied with blood, rape and devastation. The poet could not but voice his despair. It was Faiz Ahmed Faiz who said that this was not the dawn of freedom that had been looked orward to: yeh dagh, dagh ujala, yeh shab-guzida sehar; Intezar thha jiska yeh who sehar to nahin. Half a moon and a star fluttered on one side and the tri-colour on the other, and there were many who felt, truly, this was not the face of the dawn for which heroes had gone to the gallows. It was Amrita Pritam who invoked Waris Shah to speak again of the sorrows of the land of Punjab torn in two, and the poem was loved on the other side of the barbed wire too. The lot of poets on the other side was often to be behind bars for offending the dictatorial regime. Faiz, undergoing a jail term in the Fifties, sent out a couplet: Badha hai dard ka rishta yeh dil garib sahi; Tumhare naam pe aayeinge ghamgusar chale (This bond of suffering is great even if the heart be imporverished; Just call us and we'll be there to share your sorrows). It at once touched hearts on both sides.

The two countries shared a dard ka rishta (bond of suffering) and Sahir Ludhianvi, one of the finest lyricists of Hindi cinema, explicitly said that be it the blood of the Hindu or the Muslim, it was the blood of humanity. Years later, when Pakistan suffered humiliation and Bangladesh was created, Sahitya Akademi Award winning Punjabi poet S S Misha wrote an empathetic poem even as victory songs were being sung on this side. He described the strange saga of animosity' which brought a tear even to the `victor's eye during the surrender of arms.

But how long will these bonds hold as fundamentalists on both sides seem to working towards an exclusive culture? Ask this of poet and film-maker Gulzar and he says: ``What the two countries share is not just contemporary poetry. We share Baba Farid, who is a part of the Guru Granth Sahib. The question is that will this common culture survive for the generations to come? For the third generation, Pakistan will be Pakistan and India will be India. It will last as long as the memory of grand parents lasts. The breeze has to keep blowing if the shared heritage is to mean anything to those who follow.''

Alas! It is a hot wind which seems hellbent on scorching that which is tender on both sides. While fundamentalism of the Pakistani variety has been only too well known, our side too is now making up for lost time with vengeance. The guardians of Hindutva seem to have found in Kargil a scapegoat for their cultural crusade. The guns were trained on M.F. Husain for his paintings, then on Shabana Azmi for her role in Deepa Mehta's Fire and now on the Dadasaheb Phalke Award winning actor Dilip Kumar to return the Nishan-e-Imtiyaz award to Pakistan.

Poet Javed Akhtar says: ``What happened at Kargil was unfortunate. But its repercussions in the body politic of Pakistan are significant. For the first time, people have come out openly against the fundamentalists. A showdown is inevitable. If Pakistan goes a more reasonable way, the cultural ties between the two countries are bound to improve.'' And what about this side? Have not the Indian Muslims been called upon to wear the badge of patriotism? Akhtar's answer to these questions is: ``To some extent it is understandable. A section of people may doubt the loyalties of the Indian Muslims. But the Indian Muslim has reiterated his/her stand against the two-nation theory. It is for the other side also to come out and say so too, for nations should not be based on religion.''

Says Delhi-based playwright Asghar Wazahat, who penned the modern classic Jis Lahore Nahi Dekhea O' Jamea Nahin, which addressed the issue of communalism, using the shared poetic experience and interspersing the play with the poems of Nasir Kazmi who migrated to Pakistan in 1947 and whose poems reflect the agony of Partition. Wazahat's play, a raging hit in India, was also to be performed in Karachi. But the Pakistan Government did not allow it to be staged. `` It had only two exclusive shows in the Goethe Centre, Karachi, in 1991. But the reviews it got there were similar to the reviews here. This means there are liberal, secular people there too,'' adds Wazahat.

The poem which the liberals are holding on to for dear life in these troubled times comes from Pakistan. It has been penned by Fehmida Riyaz, a poet well-known to India. Having earned the wrath of the mullahs during Zia-ul-Haq's regime, she lived in exilein India for seven years. The poem is a scathing comment on the rise of fundamentalism on this side of the border: Tum bilkul ham jaise nikle, Ab tak kahan chhupe thhe bahi. She says that the folly and bigotry in which they passed a century, is now knocking at our door. With her tongue firmly planted in her cheek she cries out, ``Congratulations, many congratulations to you!''

``This poem'', says Delhi-based Hindi poet Manglesh Dabral: ``is the poem of the times. As long as such poetry is being written, there is no fear of the bonds snapping between the two countries which have shared history over a millennium.'' Such is the bond of suffering between people of the two countries that Faiz spoke of--a bond that could spell the much-needed peace for the subcontinent.

Tribute to Giani Gurdit Singh

2008-12-16T11:43:00.000-08:00

He captured the soul of rural Punjab

Nirupama Dutt
HE immortalised Mitthewal, an obscure Malwai village of the Malerkotla state of yore in Mera Pind, a book that enjoys the status of a classic today, and the book, in turn, immortalises its writer Giani Gurdit Singh.
He was a scholar of great repute, who made significant contributions in the areas of journalism, politics, Sikh religious studies and Punjabi culture. However, he was best loved and is best remembered today for his little epic that captured the heart and soul of Punjab’s rural life as it was in yesteryear.
This is not to say that his contributions in other areas were any less. He played a pivotal role in the establishment of Punjabi University, Patiala. On the basis of his report filed to the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), Takht Sri Damdama Sahib was established as the fifth Takht.
The Giani was the founder of the Sri Guru Granth Vidya Kendras in Delhi and Chandigarh. In fact, he was a towering figure in post-Independence Punjab, who held important posts and received many honours. But what set him apart from others was his integrity and refusal to budge from what he held true, no matter what the political climate of the time was.
A robust and earthy sense of humour and courage of conviction kept him active and alert, in spite of setbacks to his health, to a ripe age of 84. He authored scores of books on culture, folklore and religion, having started his career as the editor of Prakash, a daily Punjabi newspaper from Patiala he started in 1947.
His literary circle in those days included writer Suba Singh and Prof Pritam Singh. A spontaneous essay, written in his daily in 1953 on his village paved the way for Mera Pind, published in 1961. The Encyclopaedia Britannica calls the book ‘one of the most outstanding novels depicting rural life in Punjab.’
Well known writer Khushwant Singh had said of Mera Pind: ‘The book gives a lively picture of pastoral life, written in delectable prose, studded with aphorisms, anecdotes, proverbs and songs. The one thing that will give Mera Pind a long lease of life, if not immortality, is the fact that the author has used the Punjabi language as it is spoken by the common people.’
As the news of the Giani’s demise spread in literary circles, short story writer Mohan Bhandari says: “I have said it before and I am saying it now that even 12 Sahitya Akademi awards for this book would have been less for in it is encased the soul of Punjab.”
The book that defied classification did not win the Sahitya Akademi award but awards never make a book, readers do. Running into its seventh edition, the book is one of the best read in Punjab and commenting on it poet Surjit Patar says: “If you haven’t read this book, you have missed much of Punjab.”
Mera Pind portrays the innocence and simplicity of the Punjabi village before the intervention of ‘development’ and materialism. Paying a tribute to the Giani, Punjabi critic Bhushan says: “Mahatma Gandhi had said that India lived in its villages, and I say that the village lived in Giani Gurdit Singh.”
Published in The Tribune, January 18, 2007.

On Rajinder Singh Bedi

2008-12-14T14:02:00.000-08:00

A creator `Sailing to Byzantium’

Nirupama Dutt

Meeting Rajinder Singh Bedi, writer and film-maker, who came here to receive the honour bestowed upon him by the Punjab Government for his outstanding services to the Indian film industry, brought to the mind the image of a desolate theatre, the players and viewers having fled, and the director sitting alone thinking of what has been gained and what lost. Bedi is no longer the vivacious man known for his wit and humour. A sudden attack of paralysis a year ago rendered his right side almost useless and at 65 he has lost the sight of one eye. He almost apologized for his ailing memory, fumbling speech and regretted that had he been his old self, this interview would have been more interesting and alive, for now he could not even remember the names of all the films he had made. One was reminded of W. B. Yeats ‘Sailing to Byzantium’:

``That is no country for old
Men, the young,
In one another’s arms, birds
In the trees,
Those dying generation--at their song’’

Born and brought up in Lahore, Rajinder Singh Bedi started his career as a post office clerk and during this period published two collections of short stories ``Dana o’ Daan’’ and ``Grayahan’’. These brought him fame and steadily through his literary pursuits he rose to the position of Station Director, All India Radio, Jammu and Kashmir, after the partition of the country. However, the job did not last long and he left for Bombay, the Mecca of Indian film industry, to try his luck. The first film he wrote was ``Badi Behan’’ with the singing star Surayya. The instant success of this movie brought him more work. Bedi wrote the screenplay of some of the most memorable films of the Indian cinema like ``Devdas’’, ``Daag’’,``Rail Ka Dibba’’, ``Basant Bahar’’. ``Ab Dilli Door nahin’’, ``Mirza Ghalib’’, ``Anuradha’’, ``Satyakam’’ and ``Anupama’’.

The first film he made on his own was `Garam Kot’’ with Balraj Sahni and Nirupma Roy, and then ``Rangoli’’ with Kishore Kumar and Vyajanthimala. Both did fairly well but it was his ``Dastak’’, a low-budget film based on his play ``Nakle makan’’, which brought him acclaim at the national level and he was awarded the Padma Shri.
His classic novel ``Ek Chadar maili Si’’, which was a sincere portrayal of the rural life of Punjab, won him the sahitya Adademi Award. ``I had written it in just three months’’, recalled Bedi. After he wrote it, he gave the manuscript to Krishan Chander to go through, Krishan Chander started reading it in the late hours of the evening and was so absorbed that he could not put it down. When he finished it late at night, he ran in his underclothes to Bedi’s house and said, you don’t know that you have written a masterpiece!’’ Bedi tried more than once to make a film on it but somehow the venture was ill-started in 1965, he started making it in Punjabi called ``Rano’’ with Geeta bali as Rano and Dharmendra as mangal. ``Shammi Kapur was against his wife playing such a bold role but Geeta bali was in love with the character of Rano and she lived the role’’, said Bedi. But the film was two-thirds complete when Geeta bali got small-pox. Bedi recalled the last hours when his ``Rano’’ died. ``I was by her side with her husband and father-in-law. She was completely covered with blisters, her face swollen. Geeta had beautiful eyes and she was so proud of them In that state, she asked for a minor to see her eyes but when she could not see them she fell unconscious and never regained consciousness. After her death, Bedi just drew a line across the negatives.

Some years back Bedi started the project once again and the mahurat was performed here in the Tagore Theatre and Kiran Thakar Singh was taken in the lead. Though the film was to be in Punjabi, the Punjab Government did not come forward with any help. Bedi was facing bad days. His ambitious venture ``Phagun’’ having flopped, the project had to be shelved once again. Now, Bedi revealed, Girish Karnad was making it in Hindostani and the cast had yet to be decided upon. Asked if he felt bad that his cherished dream was being realised by another, he replied: ``No, I am happy. I do not have the capacity to make it any longer and very few would take up a project like this. And Karnad knows more about films than I do, so he might do more justice to it.’’ He said that he could never make a Punjabi film because none came forward to help him.

Bedi has received many awards in his life but he was particularly bitter about the recent State honour given to him and S Sukhdev, ``The poor widow of Sukhdev came all the way from Bombay and she was given no money. Neither was I with such treatment, do they think anyone will come from Bombay to make a Punjabi film here? No one will touch them even with a pair of tongs,’’ he said. After ‘Phagun’, Bedi attempted another experimental film ``Ankhon Dekhi’’ on the atrocities on harijans with two newcomers, Suman Sinha and Suresh Bhagat. ``The day I got the censor certificate, I was taken ill and after that all my workers scattered and I was left alone.’’ He is now trying for the release of the film but he fear that it will not be done in his lifetime for he has vague premonitions of death. To a query of what he thought of the pages devoted to him in Balwant Gargi’s book ``the Naked Triangle’’, in which Bedi’s personal life has been laid bare with a vengeance, he answered: ``I have not read the book but I have heard about the much he has churned on. He never sought my permission to write anything and what he has written is in bad taste. If I got involved with one woman, Gargi got involved with 50 but that does not make literature.”

Looking back at his career, he said that it had been creatively satisfying but what was the use of making good films? There will always be a few to carry out the struggle and never see the fruit of their labour. Though Bedi will never be able to make a film again, he wants to write two novels, which he has already begun Mr. H.S. Bhatti made an offer that he stay with him and write them, but Bedi wants to work for the release of ``Ankhon Dekhi’’ first. Surprisingly, none of the local organizations arranged a get-together of the local writers to meet Bedi, not even some groups in the university, who love to bask in the glory of others. Perhaps they were more busy giving statements to the press about the deep shock Jean-Paul Sartre’s death had left them in!

Bedi’s son, Narinder Singh, is a successful film-maker and his films sell. Bedi said, ``My son realised what was profitable and made such films like `Bandhan’. `Jawani Diwani’, `Rafoochakkar’and `Benaam’. Asked if given the choice once again, would he make such a compromise and the reply, thankfully, was not disappointing. He said, ``No I would not have made such a compromise.’’ If with all the bitterness and disillusionment, this be the answer then hope still not lost and once again Byzantium, Yeats’ symbol for purity and creativity, comes to the mind:
``An aged man is but a paltry
Thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick
Unless,
Soul clap its hands and sing,
And louder sing,
For every tatter in its moral
Dress.’’

Indian Express, April 20, 1980

Chasing dreams

2008-12-10T05:48:00.000-08:00

My dreams
Look for
The real thing
And my
Reality
Chases a dream -- Deepti Naval

Nirupama Dutt

This Little poetic confession comes from the second known Bollywood actress who took to writing poetry. And it’s not just poetry for Deepti Naval. Apart from being a painter, this petite actress has recently made forays into photography. In Delhi for her first-ever exhibition of photographs at Gallery Espace, Deepti brings with her the rugged landscape of Ladakh. The wide open sky, the snowcapped mountains, the trees shorn of the last leaf, walls of stone, rounded mud wall of a remote monastery merging with the bare hilltop…. And occasionally, a winterscape peopled with women wrapped in shawls and smiles.
Her dreams have certainly chased the real thing. And the photographs speak of skill and poetry. These stark landscapes are in a way an extension not just of her own poetry, but also that of her celebrated predecessor, Meena Kumari. Their poems speak of their direct communion with nature and of their journey through life alone. For, it was Meena Kumari who had spoken of Chand tanha hai asman tanha, dil mila hai kahan kahan tanha (The moon is alone and so is the sky, where won’t you find a heart alone?)
`Aloneness’, and not `loneliness’, was very much a part of Deepti’s early poems, which she started penning while still in college in New York. These published in an anthology called Lamha Lamha (Moment to moment) a couple years after the young, starryyears Deepti made her debut in Ek Baar Phir. This pahhened a decade after Meena Kumari’s death in 1972.
Interestingly, not only were these two actresses a generation apart, but also a world apart. Meena Kumari belonged to an age when tragedy was what the audience liked and so, with her immense talent and classic beauty, she queened over it. She played the ideal of Indian womanhood, and sadly, martyrdom followed her in life and the only way out seemed to be alcohol. Deepti came from a background in which women were empowered. She had the girl-next door looks. And charm spilling over.
The points of difference between Meena Kumari and Deepti Naval are many, but the common factor remains poetry. Interestingly, both of them gravitated poetically towards Gulzar, in their search for a sensitive man. And Gulzar not only re-invented Meena Kumari’s image on screen in Mere Apne, but also edited and published her poems after she died, for she had left all her diaries with him. Gulzar also paid her a tribute on celluloid though a short film called Shaera.
Deepti, too, found favour. Grapevine had it that the poet character that Gulzar invented in his film ljazat was inspired by her. Yes, that lovely Maya, played by Anuradha Patel, who telegraphs her poems and died strangulated, Isadora Duncan-like. Deepti laughts away the resemblance, though: ``Not really. I am not as erratic as maya was. I just love doing a lot many things.
There’s no rule that says an actress cannot paint or photograph. ``I came from a strictly non-filmi family. Both my parents were academics. I majored in painting and that was the time I learnt photography, too. But then came films,’’ she says. ``It is not a tragedy for me not to be doing films. I can do tother things.’’
For some time now, Deepti has been writing poetry in English and has penned some sensitive poems on the women inmates at the Ranchi mental asylum, which she visited to work on a script. ``Life has not been the same after that. I was so moved by the women and their histories.’ ’She says. The tentative title for her book is Living On The Edge.
On the personal front, Deepti has found a meaningful relationship with Vinod pandit, nephew of vocalist Pandit Jasraj. ``We are companions and for the moment, we do not wish to bring our relationship within the institution of marriage,’’ says Deepti. And one is happy that she has the spirit and the options which her ``older sister’’ Meena Kumari did not have. It is just that the two chased dreams at different points of history.

The Puff of Poetry

2008-11-19T12:56:00.000-08:00

Pain, poetry and passion

Nirupama Dutt

They call him Pakistan’s Shiv Kumar Batalvi but he would rather be known as Afzal Saahir, who has interpreted pain his own way.
THERE is something very endearing about Afzal Saahir, Lahore’s young poet who is in town with his fine repertoire of Punjabi poetry. Endearing and vulnerable, one is at once protective about him and a little afraid, for poets such as him have had the going tough in an essentially prosaic world. It is not uncommon for Indian hosts to introduce him as ‘Pakistan’s Batalvi.’
However, charming Saahir is quick to put things right his own mellow way, “Babeo! Na. I am an admirer of Batalvi who was one of the best poets the two Punjabs have seen but I would be rather known as Afzal Saahir for that’s who I am.” He goes onto explain that while Batalvi romanticised pain, he has endeavoured to look pain in the eye. “Pain for me is not an individual experience, I speak of the pain of an entire populace. It is not I but us who are undergoing the pain and this pain is inflicted on humanity by vested interests and not a divine ordinance,” says Saahir.
Saahir was born in Faisalabad and there he started writing poetry . “I started writing in Urdu but soon I moved to Punjabi, influenced as I was by the folk poetry sung by my mother and folk legends told by my father,” he says. His parents belonged to the Hoshiarpur district. His mother was from Jandi and his father from Chabewal. The talk of Partition makes this sensitive poet sad, “My parents were married just a month before the Partition. She was away on muklava when the riots broke out. My parents saw each other the first time in a refugee camp. My mother would tell us how the hen had just laid the eggs and the atta had been kneaded for lunch the day they fled their village.”
After school, he came to Lahore to join college and started editing various Punjabi magazines and journals, besides making a place for himself as a poet to look forward to. True enough, he proved himself and has the reputation for looting the mushaira and well loved in both Punjabs even before his book is out. The name of his first anthology to be released early next year is ‘Peedhan Vikane Aayian’. In translation it would mean — Pain is up for sale. And thus he says:: Sajjan ajj peedhan vikane aayian/ Kisse na hass kjarai bohni kisse na jholi payian.
Saahir is in India the third time and this trip he came as delegate to the Sajjaad Zaheer Centenary celebrations early this month in Allahabad and then for the IPTA meet in Lucknow. From there to Delhi and now two days in Chandigarh and Amritsar before his return. What is he taking back with him? A lot of pleasant memories and something very precious. Saahir tells, “When I went to meet Imroz, Amrita Pritam’s companion, he gave me three dozen cigarettes that Amrita had left behind. I promised him that I would smoke them when I write poems.” Thus the puff of poetry travels from Delhi to Lahore.

December 2, 2005

Kashmiri poet Naseem Shafai

2008-10-31T03:03:00.001-07:00

Poet of a Lost Paradise

Nirupama Dutt

Lal Ded, Habba Khatoon and Arnimal - Kashmir has had a rich tradition of women poets. Ded was a 14th century Sufi poet, Khatoon sang beautiful verses during the 16th century and Arnimal was known for her songs in the 18th century. But later years saw women poets lose their prominence. Surprisingly, during the insurgency years of the 1990s, some brave new women poets emerged in Kashmir. Among them, Naseem Shafai, 49, made her mark; she is the first woman poet who started writing in Kashmiri. (Ded, Khatoon and Arnimal belong to the era of oral literature). Shafai - a college teacher - has seen violence at close quarters: militants shot at her journalist husband. But this did not stop Shafai from writing against the violence unleashed by the militants and by the Indian security forces. Her poetry expresses what her state has suffered in the past decade and a half.At the recent South Asian women writers' meet in New Delhi, organised by the Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia, Shafai spoke of the need for a humanist approach towards the Kashmir issue.Q: As a poet, how do you view the turmoil that Kashmir has been going through for so many years? A: It is heartbreaking to see my beautiful land reduced to a battlefield in the past decades, with militants on one side and the security forces on the other. For centuries, invaders passed through Kashmir. But Kashmiris have witnessed the worst during the recent years.The loss of what we consider simple joys finds its way into one of my poems: "Not impossible/But difficult it has become/ For the two lovers/ To walk on the banks of the Dal Lake/ Into the moonlit night". Q: What do you think are the reasons for this violence?A: Kashmir has become a pawn in the power game between India and Pakistan. Both countries want the land of Kashmir but no one seems to be bothered about the Kashmiri people, who have suffered so much in these times. The suffering of women has been the greatest. Never before were there so many widows and orphans in Kashmir. Women have been sexually abused both by militants and security forces. And one of the saddest events has been the large-scale migration of the Kashmiri Hindus out of the state.Q: Do you think the Kashmiri Muslims could have stopped the large-scale migration?A: How could they have stopped it when they were not sure of their own safety? In fact, many Kashmiri Muslims too had to migrate because their businesses were ruined and their safety was threatened. And those who live there live under threat. I have borne the violence in my own life. My husband, Zafar Miraj, who is a journalist, became a target for the militants in 1995. He was shooting a feature for a television channel when he was shot twice in the abdomen. It was a miracle that he survived. Soon after, he went into depression and it took many years to bring him out of that. Our only son - then studying in Class 9 - moved to Delhi to the home of our Kashmiri Hindu friends. He lived there for three years to finish school. The communities of Kashmir were very well knit. What is amazing is that all this violence has not been able to cause a rift between them.Q: What is the way out?A: I am against all forms of violence, be it a mere slap or a gunshot. The real problem is of Kashmiri identity. We have been ruled by the Mughals, the Sikhs and the Dogras. We have never really had our say, for we have been very peace-loving. But this does not imply that we are willing to erase our identity. Let those who want our land speak to us in our language and know what we want. Personally, if someone went to so much trouble, I would give away the space reserved for my grave as I do not own any land. We live in a rented home.Q: As a poet did you have to struggle to make a place for yourself? A: We have had a glorious tradition of poets but they all belonged to the oral culture. I was the first woman to start writing poetry in Kashmiri. (Before her, some women wrote poetry, but only in Urdu.) I started writing when I was in my early 20s. I got encouragement from my husband, his family and my Kashmiri teacher. However, I cannot say the same about the male poets, who rarely had a word of praise for me. But I continued to struggle and my first anthology of poems - Dar Cemutzrith (Open Window) - came out in 1999. I was able to open the window of opportunities. Now there are a number of young women writing in Kashmiri and that makes me very happy.Q: What do you usually write on? What do you think are your strengths as a woman poet? A: I usually write on women's lives. Women always have a richer storehouse of vocabulary that they inherit from their mothers and grandmothers. Whenever I used new words and expressions in my poems, my teacher would ask where I learnt them from. Women also bring to poetry or other genres of literature a whole new area of experience and vision. These have been my strengths too. Q: What is your dream for Kashmir, once described as `paradise on earth'? A: Yes, it was described as paradise on earth and so it was. But now it is described as paradise lost. My generation has seen a lot of violence and bloodshed. We have seen our dreams blown to smithereens. I hope and pray that this will not be the Kashmir that will pass on to the coming generations. I am a college teacher and it wrenches my heart to see pain and fear written on young faces. My prayer for them in verse is: "My prayer goes to them. I'll sing them psalms/ May the new moon ever/ Shine in their sky."
April 25, 2004, Women's Feature Service

Little Magazines in Punjabi

2008-10-31T02:00:00.000-07:00

Small but sincere efforts

Nirupama Dutt

Preetlari, Punjab`s monthly magazine, turned 70 in October. To celebrate the long journey of this magazine, functions were organised in different towns and villages of Punjab. Preetlari has been a front-runner to the `little magazine movement` of alternative publishing in Punjab. Today over 100 different `little magazines` are printed across the state, publishing poetry, fiction and stories on social issues in Punjabi.

Poonam Singh, the editor of Preetlari (which means chain of love in Punjabi), says, "The magazine has seen many ups and downs but we have come through. Its survival is not just the survival of the written word but also the values of a secular and composite culture that the magazine has stood for."

Preetlari was started by Gurbax Singh, a US-returned civil engineer in 1933. He also established a cultural colony in Preet Nagar, a village equidistant between Amritsar and Lahore. The best talents of the time - film actor Balraj Sahni, fiction writers Upendra Nath Ashq and Kartar Singh Duggal, playwright Balwant Gargi and poets Mohan Singh and Sahir Ludhianvi - were associated with it.The first blow to this model village, which Singh wanted to develop into another Santiniketan, came when the country was partitioned in 1947. Preet Nagar was reduced to a far-flung border village, too close to the barbed wire. Although the dream of a commune fell apart, Singh transferred his dreams to Preetlari. He continued to publish the magazine in Punjabi, but the English, Urdu and Hindi editions were discontinued. Singh`s writer son Navtej helped him in this venture.But after Singh`s death, and the untimely death of Navtej, the editorship of the magazine, which was already suffering a financial crunch, passed on to Navtej`s young son, Sumeet. The young man made an effort to involve writers and restore the lost glory of the magazine. However, Sumeet was just 30 when militants led by Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale gunned him down in February 1984.A shutdown seemed imminent, but Sumeet`s brave wife Poonam, only 26 then, took on the role of the editor and lashed out against the fundamentalists. She refused to hold a religious ceremony for her husband`s funeral, saying, "If religion means violence and killing of innocent people then we have nothing to do with it."Looking back at those dark days of terrorism in Punjab, Poonam, now 44, recalls: "The situation made me bold and courageous. I got moral support from my mother-in-law, Mahinder Kaur, and assistance in arranging advertisements and marketing from my younger brother-in-law, Ratikant Singh." Poonam and Ratikant started bringing out the magazine like crusaders and Poonam was one of the few to take a stand against the militants in those days."I was trained as a theatre actress and had no experience of writing and editing. However, I gradually learnt these skills. I felt the magazine had to continue not just to support the family but also to uphold the values of secularism dear to most Punjabis. We were not prepared for another partition. Sumeet`s blood had been shed and we were prepared to shed ours."It was at this time that Poonam and her brother-in-law started the `Save Preetlari Fund`, to which Punjabis responded in a big way sending big and small contributions. Subsequently, Poonam married Ratikant. The couple has three children. While the editorial and business work of the magazine has shifted to Chandigarh (where the couple has settled), it is still printed and published from Preet Nagar.Preetlari inspired several other writers to start `little magazines` in Punjabi. In fact, the tradition of these magazines is so dynamic today that despite financial losses, publishers and editors continue to publish them.In Ludhiana, fiction writer Surinder Kaile has been bringing out a monthly magazine Anu (atom) for the past two decades. Anu is roughly the size of a human hand and publishes only poems and short stories. In Barnala, fiction writer Ram Swarup Anakhi has been bringing out a quarterly magazine-Kahani Punjab - which is dedicated solely to the Punjabi short story.Poet Parminderjit publishes a very popular bi-monthly from Amritsar called Akhar (a letter of the alphabet) with a wonderful selection of poetry.From time to time, enthusiasts bring out magazines printed on inland letters!Sahitya Akademi award winning fiction writer Prem Prakash, who edits Lakeer (line), a quarterly literary journal published from Jalandhar says, "My first short story was published in Preetlari. In a way, the magazine acted as a catalyst." However, with the rise of Naxalite movement in Punjab, the young breed of writers disassociated themselves with Preetlari (which did not subscribe to the Naxalite ideaology) and started several small magazines.Poonam acknowledges that the Naxalite movement did prove to be a setback to Preetarli, but adds, "The magazine however managed to retain its place and still has the widest circulation at home and abroad." While other magazines do not have a print order of more than 500, Preetlari touches the 5000 mark."As the magazine has completed its seventieth year, our effort is to strengthen the magazine and also publish books. The tradition must continue and thrive," says Poonam.Preetlari has also inspired poet and novelist Amrita Pritam (now 84), who founded Nagmani (The Serpent`s Gem), along with her partner, artist Inderjit Imroz, in 1961. The monthly magazine, published from New Delhi, discovered young writers over two generations and translated some of the world`s best literature in Punjabi.Published on a shoestring budget, Nagmani had a very artistic layout with Imroz designing the cover and doing the sketches inside. The only advertisements allowed were literary in nature and these were few and far between. It survived over three decades purely on subscriptions. But two years ago, due to Pritam`s poor health, Nagmani was forced to shut down. Sahitya Akademi award winning Punjabi poet Manjit Tiwana, who made a debut in the magazine says, "It was one magazine free of all bias. If the poems or stories were good, they would be published. Its closure of is a big loss to the world of Punjabi letters."Recently however, Sidhu Damdami, a journalist, started Sankh, another Punjabi magazine, to fill the vacuum created by the closure of Nagmani. "I belong to a village near Bathinda in Punjab and I grew up reading Nagmani. It was here that we were introduced to writers like Nirmal Verma and others. I was also first published in it and I still preserve the letter of acceptance - for my short story - which Pritam wrote. Nagmani also acted as a social monitor recording change in society and particularly the man-woman relationship."Pritam, who is bed-ridden says, "We brought out the magazine as long as we could. I get sad letters from readers and contributors. But there is no need to be sad. More magazines will come up."

November 17, 2003, Women's Feature Service

Krishna Sobti

2008-10-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

A total commitment to writing

Nirupama Dutt

WHENEVER an unbiased literary history of the Twentieth Century is written, it will be remembered as the century of the woman writer. Even though the literary woman dates back to the ancient times, it is this century that saw the woman writer come into her own and wield the pen with a confidence that was long denied to her. And this is a phenomenon that cuts across countries and cultures. And this is not to be judged by just numbers but the quality and the literary merit of their writings. These were writers who could break through the given sexist politics of literature and make a place for themselves as writers who happened to be women.In India, this century sees the rise of the woman fiction writer. We have Asha Purna Devi (Bengali), Ismat Chughtai and Qurratulain Hyder (Urdu) and Krishna Sobti (Hindi) as the pioneering writers in their respective languages who paved the way for many other writers to follow. The importance of Krishna, lies merely not in the fact that she chose a language, which spreads over a large region of the country. Or that she came from the then Hindi-speaking state of Punjab, but the fact that she could tell a story like none other conscious of the history of the century that she was born to. It is the very pulse of the times that she has captured through the everyday people and their lives. And this, while experimenting with language and coming out a winner always.Of course, to Krishna's credit go many firsts. Her novel Zindaginama, a work of epical scale set in the pre-Independence Punjab which was to be partitioned by the Radcliffe Line to be drawn across it in 1947. The writer who began with a short story first published in 1944 and written a number of novels till she penned Zindaginama was finally given the recognition of being a formidable talent. For creating Zindaginama, Krishna dipped into her childhood and adolescence spent in the ancestral haveli in Gujarat , a part of Pakistan, to relive the rich experience of the lives of the peasants and the landlords. This celebrated writer of a large body of fiction was born in 1925 in Gujarat in West Punjab. She had her early education in Delhi, Shimla and Lahore with fond holidays in the villlage where she built a storehouse of fragrance and memory. However, partition with its bloodshed and migration intervened and her aristocratic family lost many of its holdings. Krishna had to take the post of governess to Tej Singh, the then Maharaja of Sirohi, Mount Abu. Two years later she took up the post of Editor, Adult Literacy, Delhi Administration. It is said that any language has only a writer or two whose writings appear as a 'happening' but Krishna has had the unique distinction of having each of her books welcomed or criticised as a major event. This, not because Krishna was a sensationalist. Krishna remains one of the most serious of writers always but with the courage to write what others may choose to sidetrack. This was more so the case with the powerful women characters she etched. " The writer has to take the second place after etching out the character. Then a spiritual space has to be given to the character to chart out the course of her/his life," says Krishna.Krishna had made a name for herself in short fiction when her first novel came out in 1958. This was Daar se Bichuri and it told the story of a Pasho who is forced out of her flock and bought and sold like cattle in the strife-torn climate of the Afghan wars. It cuts across religion and culture and written in the decade that followed the Partition of the country in which hundreds of women of women were abducted raped, abused and killed because they belonged to the other religion. Thus Pasho's story is the story of every woman and she yet survives to nurture the child she has given birth to. The story was told with great linguistic economy, an art Krishna was to master, as she moved from novel to novel. This made it more powerful and just the stark description of the events that take place in Pasho's life were enough to send shock waves through people. Pasho was to be the forerunner of the amazing Mitro of the second and much-celebrated novel Mitro Marjani which came out in 1966 and is today hailed as a modern classic. Mitro created an instant stir for it spoke of female desire in no uncertain terms and that too of a married woman in the joint-family framework of a lower middle-class Hindu family. It created aninstant stir. It was translated into Russian, English and Punjabi. Many decades later, Mitro still continues to be a subject for debate. The intensity of emotions she evokes in those who love her and those who hate her is that which would be directed toward a real woman in flesh and blood who dares to tread the forbidden path. This again is a victory of the writer whose characters are so true to life.Interestingly, years later feminists were to criticise Krishna for making Mitro choose the family. What is pertinent here is that Krishna has never worked in the feminist frame-work as we understand it. Krishna is too major a writer to be taken in by any such trap. The novel comes in the Sixties when feminism as a movement was yet to take shape. Then it was the case of a movement needing writers to support it and thus feminists groups turning to the writings of say an Ismat or a Krishna who have an existence that goes much beyond the ism. The writer herself says, " Mitro Marjani was not a writer's story. It was Mitro's story. I was amazed at the surprises she gave me at every turn. Brought up by her mother outside the walls of patriarchy, Mitro is her mother's daughter who can voice her desires and get away with it. She has no inhibitions about talking of things tabooed by tradition without being offensive. She really impressed me." Krishna's other novels like Yaron ke Yaar,which speaks the language of the clerks in a government office in Delhi and unravels corruption in public life; Teen Pahar, a charged romantic narrative set in the tea gardens in the Darjeeling hills of a woman abandoned for another; Surajmukhi Andhere Ke, which sensitively explores the problem of child rape in which the victim survives to come to terms with her own desire; and Ai Ladki, a remarkable dialogue between a dying mother and her single daughter; Dil-O-Danish,which dwells on the dichotomy of two women and a man set in the cultural climate of Delhi of the early Twentieth Century; and the most recent Samae Sargam, a story of old age; are all milestones which mark a remarkable journey which seems to converge to the centre point of Zindaginama, a saga of love, life and strife told with a truly great flourish. In each of these works she sharpens her style with care to authenticate the situation portrayed. Zindaginama established her instantly as one among the greats. Suffused with the ethos and ambience of pre-Partition rural Punjab, this novel is a visual and dramatic recall of early memories in episodic form. Nand Kishore Naval has referred to it as the most comprehensive, sympathetic and sensitive treatment of the peasant since Munshi Premchand. The narrative flow in the novel is symbolised by the 'the river of life' and the narrative voice is depersonalised. Of this novel which is a gift to the very earth that she was born of, Krishna says, "One fateful morning I woke up with echoes of the Azaan in my ears, and before my eyes stood one minaret of a mosque. I knew then that I was committed to carrying the eternal echo of this voice through the century—Allah-O-Akbar." In this saga of life the experiments with language reached their climax with Krishna incorporating Punjabi dialects into the narrative in Hindi and suffusing the language with a new life. Poet Ashok Vajpayee says of this novel, " The test of a great writer is that she/he take the language where it has never been before. And Krishna passes this test with distinction." Krishna also writes under the pen name of Hashmat and has published Ham Hashmat , a compilation of pen portraits of writers, friends and unforgettable characters. Hashmat for her is not merely a pen name but aspiritual double. "We both have different identities," she elaborates, "I protect and he reveals. I am ancient, he is new and fresh. We operate from different directions. Among the folks Hashmat writes about are taxi driver Jagga Singh, a nameless waiter of La Boheme restaurant, and leading literary contemporaries like Bhisham Sahni, Nirmal Verma, late Srikant Verma, Namwar Singh and many others.Krishna is a zealous guardian of her freedom as a writer and as an individual. In her own words, " I have always been my own person. It is easier to exaggerate or simplify the difference between people. My biological history says I am a woman. History and individuals cannot ignore each other. I believe that your individuality embraces our innermost uniqueness. And this individuality could be qualitatively different from person to person. And this individuality could be qualitatively different from person to person, not necessarily from male to female. I am a writer who happens to be a liberal, middle class woman. I need to have my freedom for the smooth flow of my creativity. I see in myself a creative writer who has total commitment to her creativity and art." Krishna's life and writings stand testimony to the beliefs she upholds. A very gifted writer reporting on the unreported history of love, loss, of battles won and battles lost. Writing in a climate rife with the hierarchies of literature, Krishna has yet been an influence and inspiration for hundreds of readers: both men and women. And what is it that makes her tick? Krishna says: "Writing for me, is the main activity of my life, not an alternative. In spite of this, I have not written anything in reaction. If I am sad, angry or happy, I do not go near my writing." Here is a writer deeply rooted in the integrated human experience who believes in combining both male and female elements creatively in the content.A writer who confronts, discovers, defines and redefines with the help of memory. A wordsmith if there ever be one with memory, imagination, experience and study going into making her a great writer of the times.
posted by Rooted

Munir Niazi

2008-10-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

A complete poet of our times

Nirupama Dutt

A baby boy born in the obscure village of Khanpur near Hoshiarpur on April 9, 1928, had to migrate to the promised land of Pakistan when he was still 19 and his family settled down in Sahiwal. The trauma of displacement, in the mass migration from and the struggle to start afresh imprinted itself on his sensitive soul. The pain, however, was channelled into poetry and he was to be acknowledged as one of the greatest poets of the classical tradition, equally proficient in Urdu and his mother tongue, Punjabi. Many renowned sang his ghazals singers Mehdi Hasan made his famous verses very popular by lending his voice to them:*Kaise kaise log hamare jee ko jalane aa jaate hain**Apne apne gham ke fasane hamein sunane aa jaate hain*(All kinds of people come to scorch my heart by telling me their tales of sorrow)He was Munir Niazi, equally loved for his poignant verses on both sides of the Indo-Pak border, who passed away of a cardiac arrest at Lahore the day after Christmas at the age of 78. With his passing away, we have lost one of the finest poets to the classical tradition who at the same time contributed immensely to modern poetry in both Urdu and Punjabi. Calling up from Lahore, poet and columnist Zahid Masood said: "The people of Lahore were deeply grieved to lose their favourite poet. He was what can be called a complete poet. His verse, of course, will always live with us." Haryana Urdu Akademi border: " After Faiz, he was the topmost poet of Pakistan who wrote ofsorrow but also of hope. He was equally loved for his poetry in India."It was not easy to emerge as a major poet in times when Faiz Ahmad Faiz was towering over the sub-continent in Pakistan and in India there were poetslike Firaq Gorakhpuri, Kaifi Azmi and Sahir Ludhianvi to reckon with butMunir worked the magic with his poetry. Today he is regarded as atrendsetter with his unique diction, style and thought. Niazi penned 14collections of poetry in Urdu and Punjabi. For his literary achievementsMunir Niazi was awarded Kamal-e-Funn Award for the year 2002 by Pakistan Academy of Letters and the President's Award for Pride of Performance in1992 and Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 1998. His works include Dushmanoon KeyDarmiyan, Mah-e-Munir, Aghaz-e-Zamastan, Main Dobara and AikMusalsal. Pakistani poet Neelama Naheed Durrani, who met him a day before his death,laments: In spite of his greatness, his poetry fetched him little money.Sadly, he was promised Rs 2000 for his famous ghazal, Us bewafa ka shahrhai aur ham hain dosto, sung by Nasim Begum for the Pakistani film Shaheed, but was paid only Rs 200." Poets, in all times, have never written formoney and so it was with Niazi. His verses were dictated by passion and thereality of the society. One got to hear him in person when he came toparticipate in a mushaira at Ambala in the Eighties and won many a heart byreciting his famous Partition poem in Punjabi:Kujh unjh vi raahan aukhian san, Kujh gal vich gham da tauk vi si, Kujh shahr de log vi zalim san, Kujh sanu maran da shauq vi si(The path was somewhat difficult and sorrow was resting on the chest/ The people of the city were somewhat cruel and we too had a death wish)Some three years ago one met him again at the World Punjabi Conference atLahore. He had aged and was ailing. Married twice, he had no child but manyadmirers. He spoke passionately about poetry saying: "Poetry comes from theheart and its test is that it must touch other hearts." Well, this was atest that the poetry of Niazi never failed for it appealed alike to themasses and the classes." Urdu Akademi Chairman Kashmiri Lal Zakir voiced similar sentiment on this side of the border: " After Faiz, he was the topmost poet of Pakistan who wrote of sorrow but also of hope. He was equally loved for his poetry in India."It was not easy to emerge as a major poet in times when Faiz Ahmad Faiz was towering over the sub-continent in Pakistan and in India there were poets like Firaq Gorakhpuri, Kaifi Azmi and Sahir Ludhianvi to reckon with but Munir worked the magic with his poetry. Today he is regarded as a trendsetter with his unique diction, style and thought. Niazi penned 14 collections of poetry in Urdu and Punjabi. For his literary achievements Munir Niazi was awarded Kamal-e-Funn Award for the year 2002 by Pakistan Academy of Letters and the President's Award for Pride of Performance in 1992 and Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 1998. His works include Dushmanoon Key Darmiyan, Mah-e-Munir, Aghaz-e-Zamastan, Main Dobara and Aik Musalsal. Pakistani poet Neelama Naheed Durrani, who met him a day before his death, laments: In spite of his greatness, his poetry fetched him little money. Sadly, he was promised Rs 2000 for his famous ghazal, Us bewafa ka shahr hai aur ham hain dosto, sung by Nasim Begum for the Pakistani film Shaheed , but was paid only Rs 200." Poets, in all times, have never written for money and so it was with Niazi. His verses were dictated by passion and the reality of the society. One got to hear him in person when he came to participate in a mushaira at Ambala in the Eighties and won many a heart by reciting his famous Partition poem in Punjabi: Kujh unjh vi raahan aukhian san, Kujh gal vich gham da tauk vi si, Kujh shahr de log vi zalim san, Kujh sanu maran da shauq vi si (The path was somewhat difficult and sorrow was resting on the chest/ The people of the city were somewhat cruel and we too had a death wish)Some three years ago one met him again at the World Punjabi Conference at Lahore. He had aged and was ailing. Married twice, he had no child but many admirers. He spoke passionately about poetry saying: "Poetry comes from the heart and its test is that it must touch other hearts." Well, this was a test that the poetry of Niazi never failed for it appealed alike to the masses and the classes.

Kulwant Singh Virk: A Master Story-teller

2008-10-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

THE UNFORGETTABLE MR. VIRK

Nirupama Dutt

Kulwant Singh Virk, who died recently, will long be remembered by literature buffs as a brilliant short-story writer. But to those who knew him and were touched by his gentle genius, as NIRUPAMA DUTT recounts, he was a precious friend and a tremendous source of encouragement
KULWANT SINGH VIRK was, to most of us, not just the name of writer who made people real to themselves in his short stories which will live a long life. He was a vibrant, laughing, handsome man who put his talent in his works and his genius went to life.A writer of a towering stature which went well with his own tall, well-made frame, Virk’s remarkability lay in the fact that he would say very little of himself or his work. He spoke more of the works of others, he spoke more of his people and his land — the Punjab. And Virk was to us a piece of the precious Punjab — a man who loved his land, his people.Others may have a greater authority or research on the history, society and politics of Punjab but with Virk it was an instinct which would never fail. And he took pains to share this instinct with others; to transmit the feel for the soil and its people to all those who came into contact with his work or life.“Drink as much of Punjab as possible, and then it will take care of your writing.” This was Virk’s friendly suggestion to many a young writer.Yes, Virk always came out with suggestions, never advice. It never was like Virk to get pedantic in his speech or writings. He picked out the most simple and the most commonplace subjects and wove them into a valuable piece of art — a gift essential to a writer of the short story. So he described the unforgettable “Chacha”.“Though Chacha was older to our father, we still called him Chacha. Perhaps the reason for this was that he was a bachelor. Many times I would console him saying there were less women than men in Punjab so some men had to remain unmarried. But this explanation failed to satisfy him. All the men in the village were married; all had daughters and daughters-in-law, so he never saw that there was famine of women as such.And in few lines Virk unfolded before the reader, his Punjab, its social life and its characters. His was the Punjab of villages; his own village was left behind in Pakistan. In the past few years Virk’s passion was to go back to the village and write a novel. He never could go to the village and the novel was never written.But never mind the novel, never even mind the death, though it is a grave loss to his family, friends and admirers, what one does mind is the silence which struck our laughing darling Mr Virk.The last few years of Virk were years of illness. First it was a heart attack but Virk came through that a little weaker but himself, nevertheless. It was paralysis which confined him to the bed and made him lose the power of speech. It was in this period that Virk started keeping people away but the closest of relatives and friends. And once in a while one read something about him — a poetic piece by Ajeet Cour in which she described him “Nikki Kahani Da Badshah” or a long article by Gul Chauhan called “Virk Di Chup Nall Ki Mulakaat”.I never met Virk during his years of sickness for many unavoidable reasons. I felt guilty then, for I had received from him great encouragement and warmth. But now I think it is just as well. I will never remember our Mr Virk as ailing, helpless or see the pain writ large on the face of his beautiful wife, and lovely daughters. His wife nursed him to the last keeping a brave front and trying to make a joke of it before him while she shed tears the moment she came out of the sick room.No, I will not remember all that. I will remember him tall and handsome, in an immaculate suit of a light grey or buff colour. Mr Virk relating the juiciest of literary gossip or coming to have a cup of tea in the Express canteen and bringing with him a fine article for the Saturday page. We were, very often, the proud recipients of his articles in English which he wrote with a fantastic flair for the language though he would laugh and say — “Writing in English is an arduous task. I cannot write too much in English.”But what he wrote is still fresh in the memory — he would write of Punjabi literary meets or writers’ drinking bouts. He would write home articles from his travels which read so like letters coming from Britain or Canada. He would very often give story ideas to reporters but never seek a word for himself. I may have met him a hundred times but I never interviewed him. It was a series of meetings which said more than could his tape recorded interviews.It was while doing an article on writers in the Punjab Secretariat that I first met him. There were other writers there but he stood there a giant among pygmies smiling and saying, “Bureaucracy and writing cannot go together. I will write only after I am out of the secretariat. Let’s talk of your writing instead…” He said this while the other writers there made out that bureaucracy was the greatest gift to creativity.And once one got to know Mr Virk better, one started to take little liberties and he not only allowed these with the grace of one who can take a joke but also enjoyed it. When the Punjab Arts Council gave him an award, one noticed that the white streak in his brown beard had shifted a little and he replied, “Well, I keep trying out these designs to see which will look the best.” He wasn’t the one to be shy of admitting to brown hair dye or purple for that matter. And then came a time when he stopped dying his beard.It was not just the heart attack but the turmoil in Punjab which took away much of his laughter. I remember him sitting in the shabby Express canteen pondering over a cup of oversweet tea and he said, “No, I am not writing. In Punjab one can’t think at the moment of short stories or novels.” Virk had experienced earlier, the pain of 1947 and in a story written of the devastation of the partition, he had said that the blades of grass come out nevertheless green and fresh and so goes the cycle of life and time.Mr Virk, it is a hard task to write on you now! Believe me, it isn’t easy, for one is almost tempted to say that he was a man of a vanishing tribe. Will still men be made like him? The pain of the moment may compel one to say that no there never will be a man like him. But then that would not be so, he too wouldn’t have liked it — he who believed so much in the continuity of life, powers to resurrect and make a new. No there will be men like him in other places at other times. The heart warms up to think that some day, somewhere there will be another Mr Virk telling a jittery, club reporter that… “let’s talk of your writing instead.”And this, Mr Virk, is no obituary. No one, I am sure would have wanted to write one. That’s why the newspapers took time. It is no easy task to write obituaries to those whom one has loved. So this is just a letter that got delayed. It wasn’t written to you during your helpless days of sickness for one would not have liked to bring a tear to your eyes. Never mind the tears in our eyes.

January 12, 1988

Amrita Pritam

2008-10-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

The girl from Gujranwala

PROFILE by Nirupama Dutt

It is a pleasant December morning. The day is Thursday. The bus I take from Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi, drops me at the Phool Mandi in Mehrauli. Before starting on a day’s work in town, I venture into the flower market. Gardeners from farmhouses and nurseries gather there to sell flowers to the kiosks, florists and others who wish to buy the blooms on a bargain. There are roses aplenty in myriad hues, tall stalks of tuberoses and gladioli, small bunches of carnations and narcissuses. Of course, chrysanthemums in varying sizes and colours seem to have taken over the market. There are the snow-white big blooms with curling petals and smaller ones in pink, yellow and red. A gardener offers me a big bunch of blood-red blooms, flecked with orange for a few rupees. I just cannot resist the temptation and I find myself with the big bunch in my arms along with the bag and books that I am carrying. What will I do with them? It occurs to me that they must go to the girl from Gujranwala, which was famous for its blood-red malta oranges. And who is this girl from Gujranwala? She is none other than Amrita Pritam, the celebrated Punjabi poet. Her poem, ‘Aj akhaan Waris Shah noon, kiton qabran wichon bol’ (‘I call out to Waris Shah today to speak from his grave’), written after the Partition, is loved across India and Pakistan: I call out to Waris Shah today to rise from his grave and open a new page of the book of love. Once a single daughter of the Punjab cried out, and you wrote many dirges. Today a million daughters weep and look to you for solace... Amrita wrote these lines to the poet to immortalised the folk heroine Heer a few months after Partition and the poem became a symbol of the catastrophe on both sides of the border. The story behind the writing is even more heartrending. Looking back, Amrita once told me: “Uprooted from Lahore, I had rehabilitated myself at Dehradun for some time. I went to Delhi looking for work and a place to live. On my return journey in the train, I felt the wind was piercing the dark night and wailing at the sorrows the Partition had brought. I had come away from Lahore with just one red shawl and I had torn it into two to cover both my babies. Everything had been torn apart. The words of Waris Shah, about how the dead and parted would meet again, echoed in my mind. And my poem took shape.” Amrita is a poet of many seasons. She was born in 1919 in Gujranwala, now in Pakistan, in a Sikh household. I remember her partner, the artist Imroz, once jesting as she spoke of her birthplace, “You know Gujranwala is famous for just two things, blood-red maltas and Amrita Pritam.” Amrita’s father was a man of letters and encouraged Amrita to read and write. She published her first book of poems when she was just fourteen. However, it was in 1935 in Lahore that she got serious critical notice for her poems with the publication of the anthology Thandian kirnan . Then there was no looking back. After the Partition in 1947, Delhi became her home. Her talent blossomed in the capital of independent India, and writing in Punjabi, her mother tongue, she was to take the language places. Among the honours she received for her writings are the Sahitya Akademi award, the Padma Shri, Jnanpith Award (the first Punjabi writer to be thus honoured), Cyril and Methodius Award (Bulgaria), and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France). Besides poetry, she’s written essays, short stories and novels in Punjabi and Hindi, and her work has been translated into thirty Indian and foreign languages. She is also a former member of the Rajya Sabha, upper house of Parliament. The story of Amrita’s life is one of amazing courage, resilience and achievement. What set her apart was her search for freedom and desire to live life on her own terms. She was reared in an orthodox environment yet dared to write of love. Walking out of a loveless marriage, she made her home with Imroz and their relationship has lasted over forty years. Although she is vocal about the rights of women and has portrayed the sorrows they face in a male-dominated world, Amrita always felt that men and women complete themselves in a meeting of the body and soul. Defying the established norms of the society and carving out a special place for herself was not easy but she persevered and helping her along was her special talent for words. For three decades Amrita and Imroz brought out a literary monthly in Punjabi called Nagmani that had nothing short of a cult following. I have a special relationship with Amrita and Imroz dating back a quarter of a century. However, I am but one of a large and charmed circle because their magazine nurtured two generations of Punjabi writers. She brought onto stage the Punjabi poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi, fiction writer Dalip Karu Tiwana, Mohanjit, Manjit Kaur Tiwana, Gagan Gill and many others. Her address in New Delhi, K-25, Hauz Khas has become a site of literary pilgrimage. She also recorded in the magazine the changes happening in society. Amrita was forced to close the magazine three years ago as her health deteriorated. Recently, Amrita’s poetry reached an even wider audience, through the offices of India’s massive film industry. Pinjar , a film based on a novel she wrote nearly half a century ago, featured her famous poem to Waris Shah. During her life Amrita has defied conservative society and many times earned the wrath of the Sikh clergy. She rewrote legendary tales of doomed love, and survived some of the most horrifying moments in subcontinental history. It’s no surprise she’s an inspiration to many. Her poem to Waris Shah is engraved on a memorial to 1947 at the Indo-Pakistan border at Wagah, along with a poem by the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Yet she is humble: she says she has merely returned what she learnt from the poetry of Sufi sages, and quotes a line from her own poetry: “I make no claims to talent, but I am proud of my love and dedication…” And so I find myself outside that hallowed address, K-25, Hauz Khas, New Delhi, clutching the bunch of blood-red chrysanthemums. For the past three years, Amrita has been on a sickbed. Six months ago when I visited her with a small nosegay of orange poppies, she could still talk and once helped to sit up, she smoked a cigarette and inquired if I was in love these days or not. Laughing, Imroz said, “She would be, for the colour of the flowers is one of youth in bloom.” When he left her room to get some tea, she grew grumpy. When he returned she flirtatiously spoke out to him the line of a Punjabi song: Maradi nu chhad ke na jaayin mittara (‘Don’t leave a dying woman, my friend’). Imroz jokingly replied, “You keep saying you will die but you don’t!” Two months ago when I came to see her again, she could not sit up. Lying there she wept and said that it was time her body set her soul free. Then last month, she was deep in slumber, and I did not go to her room. This time she is sleeping again. I sit down with Imroz to share a morning cup of tea. We’re seated at that familiar black dining table on which Imroz has splashed some colour: bougainvillea vines trail onto it from the windows. All around are sketches and photographs of the girl who won his love. And Imroz talks of his favourite subject – Amrita, of course. They have lived together for nearly half a century. A very open man, he has often talked to me about the love Amrita had for Sahir Ludhianvi, Urdu poet and film lyricist. Amrita, of course, has put it all in black and white. Today he talks about the first holiday the two had in Andretta, as guests of painter Sobha Singh in the summer of 1958. Then he asks me if I have seen the new book of poems and adds, with a murmur, “Her last book.” Everyone knows that the end is painfully near. There is a murmur from her room. He goes there and I follow him with the bunch of flowers in my hand. Amrita is writhing in pain and he caresses her face. I bend down to touch her and for a moment she stops sighing and flashes me that naughty girlish smile. It is Thursday, the holy day of the pir faqir . I put the flowers on the bedside table and the smile of the pir called Amrita falls into my lap as a blessing. The pilgrimage is complete.

A poem by Amrita Pritam

Main tainu pher milangi

(I will meet you yet again)

I will meet you yet again

How and where? I know not

Perhaps I will become a figment of your imagination and maybe,

spreading myself in a mysterious lineon your canvas,

I will keep gazing at you
Perhaps I will become a rayof sunshine,

to be embraced by your colours

I will paint myself on your canvas

I know not how and where –

but I will meet you for sure.
Maybe I will turn into a spring,

and rub the foaming drops of water on your body,

and rest my coolness on your burning chest.

I know nothing elsebut that this lifewill walk along with me.
When the body perishes,all perishes;

but the threads of memory are woven with enduring specks

I will pick these particles,weave the threads,

and I will meet you yet again.

Translated by Nirupama Dutt and published in The Little Magazine

Ik si Amrita, Ik hai Imroz

A love story revisited by Nirupama Dutt

People are trying to explore live-in relationships and society is trying to learn to accept such unconventional ties. But more than forty years ago there was this gutsy girl from Gujranwala and a dreamy boy born in Chak No: 36, near Lyallpur, who defied all convention and chose to live together in a brick-and-stone house lined with dreams just because they loved each other. What is more, this bond of love stood firm in the face of storms and it retained its intensity and beauty until the dying day.
No, I am wrong here for even death has not the power to do them part. One is talking, of course, of Punjab’s celebrated poet Amrita Pritam and her lifetime companion painter Imroz.
Pal Kaur, Ambala-based Punjabi poet, says: “It was the ideal relationship of our times. It was a coming together of two souls who complemented each other and it was a spiritual bond if there even could be one.”
For Amrita it was the realisation of the dream of finding true love. The lady of letters had recorded the experience of finding Imroz in the second volume of her autobiography called “Shadows of Words”, which is a sequel to her famed life story title “The Revenue Stamp”. She wrote that there was once a shadow in her dreams of a man standing by a window and painting a canvas. This dream would return night after night for long years. In her own words: “Then something happened. Someone suggested that an artist called Imroz design the cover of a book of mine. The shadow turned into a man. Love may be a cup of poison but I had chosen to sip it again.”
Those, who have seen the two live together in bliss day after day in their Delhi home, K-25 Hauz Khas, know that it was not poison but nectar divine that the two had tasted together. In that house with gray stonewalls on which bougainvillea trailed, they lived out their dreams. Patiala’s Punjabi poet Manjit Tiwana says: “Their relationship surpassed even that of Sartre and Simone. For one Amrita and Imroz shared the same home and unlike Sartre Imroz showed greater devotion till the very end. Every Punjabi woman writer longed to be loved by an Imroz but perhaps you have to be an Amrita to get an Imroz.”
True! The “Haar-Singhar” tree in their patch of green was witness to the blossoming and ripening of their love. Poetry had met painting, woman had met man and two souls had come together to belie the oft-repeated cliché that there is no true love in this world. Amrita and Imroz were born to the land of doomed love a la Heer-Ranjha, Sohni-Mahiwal and Mirza-Sahiban but they defied the shackles of society and realised their love. I recall what Punjabi fiction writer Ajeet Cour said when she visited her older sister of letters perishing on the sick-bed: “There was Imroz pressing her legs to relieve her of pain and attending to every little need of hers. It is so rare! I have yet to see such devotion from a man for a woman. She must have done many good deeds in her past lives.”
No Imroz came to her not as a result of past deeds but the deeds of this very life of this gutsy Gujranwala girl who was Lahore’s celebrated poet when she was just sixteen and later she won fame home and abroad with her gifted pen. The two gave each other complete space and freedom in their home together. Amrita cooked the meals and Imroz made those endless cups of tea for the stream of writers visiting them. Theirs’ was an open house and I had the privilege of staying there ever so often and eating the saag and chapatti cooked with love by one of the greatest poets of our times and drinking tumbler after tumbler of tea that Imroz made with the same involvement as he made his sketches.
How does the male world react to this relationship all against the established macho order? Fiction writer and editor of Sankh literary weekly Sidhu Damdami says: “The relationship was path-breaking. They became a role model and many tried to experiment thus to be together but few reached the heights that these two amazing octogenarians did. It was love that held them together.” Well-known satirist Bhushan, who was close to the two, says sans satire for once: “It was an example of complete surrender by Imroz who was an admirer of her writings. What is remarkable is that he was by her side till the very end. It can only be described as spiritual.”
And how does 80-year-old Imroz, for he was six years younger to Amrita, feel now that Amrita passed away on the Diwali eve? Is he shattered and lonely that she is now gone? However, he surprises their admirers by saying, “I am not sorrowful at all and not lonely either. Only her ailing body is gone, she is till with me. Even death cannot do us part.”

Obituary: The true daughter of Waris Shah

Nirupama Dutt
Chandigarh, October 31The news of the passing away of the grand dame of Punjabi letters, Amrita Pritam, spread like forest fire through the literary circles in Chandigarh and Punjab as telephone calls started coming from Delhi minutes after her demise.
She rose like a meteor with her verses in Punjabi in Lahore in the Lahore of the 1930s and ‘Thandian Kirnan’ published by her in 1935, when she was just 14, brought her serious critical notice and there was no looking back after that. In a literary career spanning seven decades, she did Punjabi proud by bringing it the highest of national and international awards and honours. Not only was her contribution great in poetry and prose, she also provided a platform to young Punjabi writers in her magazine ‘Nagmani’, which she edited for 33 long years.
As writers recalled her and her times, the lines from her famous poem ‘Ajj akhan Waris Shah nu…’ was on many a lip. This poem made her the indisputable Punjab’s Partition poet on both sides of the border for she had summed so well the sorrow and loss that Partition had wrought on human lives.
Born in 1919 at Gujranwala in West Punjab in the rather orthodox Sikh society of the times, she showed rare courage in coming forth with what she believed in both her verses and life. This pretty and petite woman reigned over the world of letters and was a path-breaking writer in her language. It was she who brought to Punjabi the prestigious Jnanpith Award for the first time for her anthology of poems called ‘Kagaz te Canvas’ and the only other Punjabi writer who got the award after her, shared with Nirmal Verma, was novelist Gurdial Singh. When asked to comment on the award, she had replied in a line of her own verse — ‘Maan suche Ishq da hai, hunar da daava nahin…’ (I am proud of my pure dedication and I make no claims to artistry).
Among the other awards she received were the Sahitya Akademi Award, Cyril and Methodious Award from Bulgaria and the Ordre des Arts des Lettres from France. The Delhi Government declared her Poet of the Millennium at the turn of the Century. Interestingly, the same title was bestowed upon her by Punjabi Academy, Lahore. However, what made her most happy was when Illias Ghumman and other Punjabi writers of Pakistan sent her in recent years three ‘chaddars’ from the tombs of Waris Shah, Bulle Shah and Sultqan Bahu saying — "You are the true daughter of Waris Shah and thus the Waris of our Waris. Frail and weak as she was in her latter years, she got herself photographed with the green silk ‘chaddars’ edged with gold. Of her own poetry, her comment in all humility was: "I have just returned what I had absorbed from reading the poetry of the great Sufi and Bhakti poets of my land."
The story of Amrita’s life is one of amazing courage, resilience and achievement. What set her a class apart from others was her very romantic search for freedom and the desire to live life on her own terms. Walking out of a loveless marriage, she made her home with artist Imroz and the relationship lasted over four decades. It was Imroz who answered the telephone at their home as he was getting her ready for her last journey. He said in a choked voice, "She has not gone, only her body has perished. She will be there in her poems and my paintings."
In her lifetime, Amrita authored over 100 books of poetry, fiction, biography and essays. In one of her last poems written from the sick bed, she consoled her love Imroz by saying, ‘Main tainu phir milagi…’ (I will meet you yet again). This is the promise she made to her soul mate but she will yet meet us all again through her writings. For today on Divali eve she has passed out of history into legend to stand in the row of poets like Meera Bai, Rabia and Lal Ded.

Mantonama

2008-10-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Manto: Messiah or madman?

Nirupama Dutt

on Saadat Hasan Manto, the wild child of literature.

A month before I was born here in Chandigarh, there died a man called Saadat Hasan Manto out there in Lahore in 1955. He was just 43 and he had challenged God in his own epitaph that is written on his grave_ "There Saadat Hasan Manto lies buried…and buried in his breast are all the secrets of the art of story writing. Even now lying buried under tons of earth he wonders whether he or God is the greater writer of the short story."
For the likes of me who grew up without knowledge of Urdu, the language Manto wrote in, he remained a much-talked-about yet obscure litterateur and my first introduction to his stories was through a special issue of Sarika, a literary monthly that used to be brought out the by Times of India group long ago, sometime in the 1970s.
This issue carried some of the Partition stories for which Manto is so famous. However, for a teenager brought up on a not so merry mix pulp fiction in English, Hindi and Punjabi via Devanagari these stories were difficult and somewhat remote.
This seems a rather strange confession from a member of a family that had migrated from Lahore in the bloody 1947. The only alibi that I can find for it is in the ‘conspiracy of silence’ that was to be found not only in politics, history but even within homes. It took me many years to know which aunt had been abducted and then rehabilitated or which relatives had slaughtered their daughters as they migrated from one part of the Punjab to the other.
Saadat Hasan Manto was of Kashmiri origin born at Padaudi village, near Samrala, in 1912.
He studied in Amritsar but dropped out of college before completing his graduation.
Working for All India Radio during World War II, he was a successful screenwriter in Bombay before moving to Pakistan at Partition.
Manto published 22 collections of short stories, seven collections of radio plays, three collections of essays and a novel.
In recent years he has enjoyed a cult status with many of his stories staged as plays.
A Manto theatre festival is being organised by Madeeha Gauhar of Ajoka theatre group at Lahore in November this year.
Publishers are rushing in to print him anew as the copyright on his works ends this year.
Anyway, Manto was not a name to be mentioned too often in middle class homes, specialise as he did in tales of pimps and prostitutes. He was a drunk and had been an inmate of lunatic asylums. What had we, the new breeds of Independent India, have to do with the likes of him?
Glimpses of him came in snatches from my mentor, Mantoesque poet of Hindi called Kumar Vikal. I recall him saying, "If one is to write of red-light areas in present times, one should be able to transcend a Manto who seems to have said it all." Vikal with Hindi as the medium of his expression and Left-wing politics as his inspiration seemed to dismiss Manto such.
Those were still days of ‘Laal Salam’ and Manto was also a deserter of sorts who had chosen to migrate to a country that was formed on the basis of a particular religion.
It was only in the late 1980s when Baba Laali, the Savant of Patiala, allowed me into the ranks of his disciples, who could be talked to, that I heard him referring to Manto, his writings, and also using him as a symbol for humanism amidst the dark days of militancy in Punjab. I recall some quotable quotes by Laali uttered on the bench outside the cafeteria of Punjabi University at Patiala and I gobbled these remarks with the enthusiasm of a slow learner. So said Laali: "That was 1947 and now it is AK 47." "The urinal is the only secular space. Manto has said it all in the symbol of the urinal."
In the early 1990s I actually entered that pre-Independence urinal in Bombay of old where the graffiti debated, in unprintable epithets the treatment meted out to the mothers of the two communities. For mothers and sisters are the first to be targeted in any battle that men fight and so it was with the names of the two countries that were replacing female genitals. This was when Rajkamal Prakashan published five volumes of Manto’s complete works in Devanagari. Of course these were not so complete as what would be unpalatable to the popular opinion in Hindustan was edited out. Nevertheless ‘Mutari’ (urinal) and other stories that make Manto compete with God were there and also my slowly acquired understanding to receive them.
That was a time when 50 years of Partition were approaching and so was a revival of interest in this madman and messiah called Manto who had intervened in spaces into which historians social scientists failed to reach. That was a time when progressive historians accepted their failure. Mushirul Hasan aptly says: "The fact is that to me and many other historians like me, Manto and many other creative writers expose the inadequacy of numerous narratives on Independence and Partition, and compel us to adopt new approaches that have eluded the grasp of social scientists and provide a foundation for developing an alternative discourse to current expositions of a general theory on inter-community relations."
Manto’s nephew Khalid Hasan, to whom goes the credit of translating much of Manto into English for Penguin, wrote some time ago wondering if Pakistan would pay adequate tributes to Manto on the 50th anniversary of his death. Tributes to Manto? What tribute can one pay to a writer who at the cost of his sanity, health and well-being paved the way for the preservation of essential human values. And it is to Manto and his kin that we today think of a sub-continent that will shape up differently for the positive. Manto Mian, I would like to tell you of some graffiti here in this Chandigarh of ours.
As I take a lift in some office in Sector 34 during the India-Pakistan cricket days, I find a heart with an arrow piercing it drawn by some youth of the MTV generation with the words ‘I love Pakistan’.
It has been a long and painful journey since the two governments of India and Pakistan divided their madmen and the protagonist of your Toba Tek Singh breathed his last on the no-man land. But we seem to be moving on and there are more choices before us than banishment, madness or death. Perhaps, there was a method in your madness.

With Manto through forbidden streets

Telltale balconies, bead-curtained doorways and carpeted halls lit by a single chandelier… Nirupama Dutt re-reads vignettes of a wayward world from the pen of a master storyteller

Narrow streets with sleazy paanwallahs and vendors hawking gajras, glass bangles, ittar and henna. Drowsy streets awakening alive at dusk to the strains of a thumri wafting own a dark staircase.
This is no scene recaptured from old Lucknow. Such forbidden streets with their telltale balconies, bead-curtained doorways, and carpeted halls lit by a single chandelier were very much a part of the towns of East Punjab. Although the ``entertainment’’ capital of Punjab was Lahore’s Heera Mandi, other towns such as Patiala, Ambala, Malerkotla, jalandhar, Amritsar had glittering retreats that were nearly as well populated and ``professional’’. Even little waystations like Balachaur could boast of a few houses.

Come Partition and these streets ceased to be for these were the first to be attacked. The kothas were burnt down and the tawaifs who provided comfort to any man with money irrespective of his caste, religion, mother-tongue or place of origin became the victims of communal fury. Many of them were abducted. The entire bazaar of Amritsar was burnt down and so also many buildings in what today is known as the Dharampura Bazaar of Patiala.

It was a nightmare for the girls of a famous kotha, ironically named Befikr manzil, in Patiala. “Yet, another kotha, recounts an old Patialvi ``was converted into a religious place with the original name plaque whitewashed. But when the paint would come off, devotees could read that this place of worship was once `Nissim manzil’ – a byword for nautch-gana wagera. Finally, the plaque was removed with the brick and all and now one finds there a gaping hole.’’ Although the tawaifs of Malerkotla migrated to Pakistan long ago, that town is a good place to see what the old kothas looked like – at least from the outside. Malerkotla saw neither killings nor arson in 1947 so many of the old buildings with their ornate iron railings and carved wooden awnings still line a street in the very centre of town. The ladies of Malerkotla were particularly prosperous as much of their clientele before 1947 were British troops. In fact, the town was unofficially designated for a ‘rest and recreation’.

Stories of these forbidden streets are now relegated to the memories of old timers. An aged jeweler of Amritsar recalls ``Once a week, my father would take with him a jewel or two and visit his favourite tawaif. He would return home late humming a ghazal.’’

The most vivid account of this world is to be found in the stories of Sadat Hasan Manto, the famous writer of Urdu fiction who prided himself on being the ‘best informed on the pimps and prostitutes.’
To journey with Manto through the forbidden streets is not merely to seek out the ambience of a long forgotten world but to glimpse the reality of life on the fringe of society and fathom the inner truth of the men and women who were condemned to live on that margin.

He was a writer who wrote not from flights of fancy but chronicled with great felicity what he saw, heard and experienced.
Most of the stories pertain to the late thirties and forties when the courtesan and the culture she represented had fallen on sad days. The reason was not any sort of revolution in public morals but mainly because British rule with its large military population reduced women who combined easy virtue with various kinds of cultural attainments to women who’s only commodity was flesh.
One story which he did write from hearsay recounted the tale of two famous courtesans of Amritsar and their brother who got mixed up in a revolt against the British. Called 1919 ki ek baat, it is told to the narrator by an old man in a train.

It dates back to the time when, following a ban on Mahatma Gandhi’s entry into Punjab and arrest of Congress leaders, a revolt broke out among some of Amritsar’s not-very-respectable citizens. One of them was Thaila kanjar, brother of two famous courtesans Shamshad and Almas. He attacked a British soldier, killed him and was killed in return by another soldier. The two sisters wept for their brother who had died a hero’s death. Sadly, the two sisters had to perform a mujra that evening for the officers. Here the old man broke down, saying that instead of refusing to do so they actually sang and danced.

With this denouement, Manto mocks society for casting some men and women beyond the pale of humanity, regarding them with contempt and loathing – and at the same time expecting patriotism and noble deeds from them.

Then there is the delightful story Kaali Salwar with Sultana of Ambala as the heroine. Manto describes how Sultana, with the gora soldiers of the cantonment as her customers, had picked up a dozen or so phrases in English. When business would be poor she would say ``this life is very bad’’. And she would amuse herself by lovingly hurling the choicest Hindustani abuses at the goras who, taking them to be endearments would laugh and receive a giggling ullu ka pathas from her in return.

Sultana later moves to Delhi and falls on hard days. The story ends with her pimp, Khudabakhs, obtaining the black salwar which Sultana so badly wants for Moharram from another courtesan in exchange for Sultana’s silver ear-rings. Finally the two women come face to face.

And so one moves from street to street with the Sultana’s and Alma: heroines whom Manto delineates not as debauchees but as women with dreams, hopes and fears. There is the young girl from Lahore who cannot enter the trade until she has gone back to her city and left her lover asleep in a hotel, as he had done once after eloping with her. Then there is the honourable ``Mummy’’who runs a house of entertainment but will not allow advances on a girl too young… and the girl who shivers in her kotha in Delhi as the riots begin.
The greatest of them is the story of Saugandhi, a ten-rupee woman of Bombay who is fleeced by a policeman who poses as her lover and protector. She plays along game until one Seth refuses her as she goes out to earn some money for a girl-friend in need. With the refusal, her dreams shatter. She throws out the lousy lover and picks up her shaggy diseased dog and sleeps with him.

Not only does Manto portray the women of the forbidden streets as women first but he also exposes ``respectable folk’’ for their hardness of heart in comparison to the sadder but kinder whores and pimps. These women who trade their bodies for daily bread emerge as a shade less mercenary than those who come to buy them for a night or just half a night.

Lal Singh Dil

2008-10-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

Caste in his own image

Nirupama Dutt

Lal Singh Dil (1943-2007)

Dil with his Billa: A photgaph by Amarjit Chandan

How is one to remember Lal Singh Dil? The literary status of Dil in the world of Punjabi literature was never disputed and he is often described as the poets’ poet. Punjabi poet Surjit Patar says: “He will be counted as one of the top Punjabi poets of the twentieth century.” However, there was more to Dil’s life than is difficult to slot. It was a life of immense struggle as his story stands witness to the deep-rooted human discrimination in the name of caste, which, a creation of the Hindu way of life, is yet to be found in all major religions that have been based on conversion from Hinduism. Sadly enough, it has also been a part of the Left group cadres, which ideologically do not recognize religion, caste or creed. So Dil’s various attempts to transcend the caste barrier by joining the Naxalite movement of the late sixties in Punjab or later converting to Islam with the new name of Mohammad Bushra met with frustration that his simple poetic heart opposed.However, his life and struggle raise the issue of caste prejudice and a big question mark after his death. Punjab has a higher Dalit percentage than that of the other states. Scheduled Caste form about 30 percent of the total population and eight percent of these castes live in the rural area and are landless and mostly Sikh Jats are the land owners. The Dalits take the religion of their masters as per old practice.Born to a low-caste Ramdasia Chamar (tanner) family, Dil was the first of his clan to pass Class X, while doing his daily labour, and go to college. He was training to be a basic school teacher when Naxalbari intervened. Dil’s poetry was true to his life and that of those around him and the experience of poverty, injustice and oppression was so real and told so well that he was hailed as the bard of the Naxalite movement in Punjab. In the dream of a society free of caste and class, Dil saw a new dawn for the oppressed. However, the extreme Left cadres were not without the caste factor and when the movement was crushed the torture meted out to the Dalits by the upper-caste police was far worse. Dil went underground and moved to Muzaffar Nagar in Uttar Pradesh. Here comes the progresson of Dil. As a caretaker of a mango orchard there, he came in contact with Muslim culture. Once again he saw escape from caste oppression and converted to Islam. In a historical letter written to his mentor-friend Amarjit Chandan in February 1974, he revealed his decision in a long letter saying a crescent moon had appeared on the palm of his hand and adding a line: “Allah is very kind to Maoists because he understands cultures.”Years later Dil was to tell me, “Caste prejudice exists among the Muslims too.” And this was a scathing comment on the “Manu-made” evil that exists among the Muslims, Christians and Sikhs of the sub-continent because it is so deeply rooted in the Hindu way of life that it is difficult to get rid of it even after conversion. However, Dil remained a devout Muslim saying his namaz , keeping rozas (fasting) and eating only halaal. While he did not put his last wish to be buried on paper yet he had articulated it to his close riends and relatives. Gulzar Mohammad Goria, a writer and Dil’s constant companion, told me: “The wish was communicated to his brothers and left-wing activists. However, there was no Muslim burial ground is Samrala as the Wakf Board had leased out the ground to a Sadhu, who has built a temple there.” It would have meant taking his body to the neighbouring village of Bhaundli but it may not have been accepted there so the brothers of dil conferred and respecting the fact that he had converted to Islam, they yet decided to cremate him as they had done with other elders of the family. Goria adds, “We did not wish to rake a controversy that would make Dil the Muslim overshadow Dil the great poet.” A great poet he was undoubtedly and his collection of poetry Satluj di Hava (1971), Bahut Saare Suraj (1982), and Sathar (1997) as well as his autobiography, Dastaan, enjoy an exalted place in Punjabi letters. However, his life was a constant struggle. He was never married nor did he enjoy the companionship of any woman. His body and mind wrecked by police torture, he took to country brew. When the Naxalite movement was crushed all the activists went back to their class folds. Dil had nowhere to go to. His dreams for a better life were gone and till the end he remained a ‘proclaimed offender’ in police records because there was no one to help and set the record straight. Sadly, many Naxalite writers and artistes were to receive honours, posts and money from the government but even the meager pension of Languages Department, Punjab was not to find its way to Dil’s hovel through his long years of penury or illness.For some years after his return to Samrala, Goria and he reopened the mosque in Samrala with Dil saying the morning and evening azaan (call for prayer). Goria recalls: “God is everywhere and our effort in opening the mosque was directed to give confidence to a minority community who should not be afraid of going to their own place for prayer. However, when people started coming to the mosque, the Wakf Board intervened and took over. Well, the Wakf Board must be having its own reason because political ideology apart, Dil and Goria were just a bit too fond of their drink.With the money sent by his well-wishers in England, his hut was made over into a pucca home and a wooden shack built to serve as a teashop so that he may earn a living by selling tea. He did so in partnership with Pala, a local upper-caste drug addict, but after his death the shop was closed. On Sunday when hundreds of all shades gathered to bid adieu to Dil, but for one all old comrades took care not to mention the two truths of dil’s life: one that he had converted to Islam and the other he found solace in addiction. Expressing regret as an ex-Naxalite activist Manmohan Sharma, an admirer of the days when red had not faded, says: “This is how society exhumes radicalism and Dil the radical was not acceptable either to the society or his own party cadres.” Chandan adds more explicitly: “Beneath the faded red, the Hindus and Sikhs, they would not have anything to do with his last wish for a burial.”Dil was a legend in his lifetime and now after him his poetry lives and so does his struggle and protest. He had told this writer that one day people would come and sing qawwalis under the banyan tree outside his hovel. It will happen one day, for in ‘Manto-town’ (Samrala being the birth place of Saadat Hasan Munto) Dil was the true faqir and Manto and Dil were forever buried in many a heart.(Lal Singh Dil, poet, born 11 April 1943, Ghungraali Sikhaan, Ludhiana; died 14 August 2007 Dayanand Medical College and Hospital Ludhiana.)

Text: The Sufi Way at Malerkotla

2008-02-07T03:27:00.000-08:00

The Sufi Way in Malerkotla
By NIRUPAMA DUTT
I was out in the fields to gather fodder when Gaindarh Singh came
running up to me, waving and shouting, ‘Kanjara! You’re making
merry in the fields, you pimp, while over there in Sirhind our tenth
Guru’s sons are being bricked alive!’
I heard him and my heart sank. I stubbed out my beedi and we
ran home. I asked my Bebe to pack us a few rotis and then we set
off, Gaindarh and I, racing by the side of the canal. We reached
Sirhind late in the evening—and do you know what we saw there?
Thousands of people pouring in! The city was being swept and
cleaned for a special durbar.
We spent the night somehow, our hearts pounding. The next
morning the durbar assembled and the two Sahibzadas were brought
there in chains. What can I tell you! The older one was a spitting
image of our handsome Pappu, the landlord’s son, who studies in the
English school, and the younger one looked so like that tubby Gholu.
The Sirhind-wala Nawab asked them to change their faith and then
they would live. Even before the older one could speak, the younger
Sahibzada thrust his chest out and said, ‘Enough, Nawab! We will
never change our faith!’
Puffing with rage, his face red as blood, the nawab ordered
that the two children be bricked alive.
At this the Malerkotle-wala Nawab got up and raised his
voice: ‘This is unjust!’
I too got up, raised my arm and cried out, ‘It is absolutely
unjust!’

This is how the famed Mast, the lead comic actor of a leftwing
theatre group of Barnala, told a story. A remnant of the
Mirasi-Bhand tradition of feudal Punjab, he pulled large crowds
at Communist rallies in the ’60. His art lay in the fact that he
gave first-person narrations of historical events, improvising to
make himself and his audience characters in the times he was
enacting. Politicians in Punjab still hire comedy stars like Navjot
Singh Sidhu and Bhagwant Maan for their rallies, but old-timers
say that none can match the standards set by the unlettered
Mast, who retained in his heart hundreds of tales and told them
with as much passion as humour. The moving story of the
Sahibzadas was a favourite. Time would stand suspended as his
listeners watched and listened, becoming part of their history.
Time indeed stood suspended as I made a journey to
Malerkotla town in the Malwa region of Punjab, where the story
of the Sahibzadas is as alive today as it was some 300 years ago.
Over the centuries, Malerkotla has earned a unique reputation as
an oasis of calm in conflict-torn Punjab. Muslims, Sikhs and
Hindus have lived here without a single act of violence during
the holocaust of Partition and the dark days of militancy. It is
the spirit, people say, of the Sufis, and the nawab who stood up
for justice.
*
I take an afternoon bus from Chandigarh, hoping for the best.
My only contact in Malerkotla is Azad Siddiqui, a budding
politician of Akali Dal (Badal) whom I’ve never met. I do know
another person there, but I’m reluctant to contact him. He is a
namesake of the legendary playback singer of Hindi films.
Malerkotle-wala Mohammad Rafi is a lecturer of Urdu in the
local Government College—also a maverick painter, orator and
theatre-person, and a man who can derail all your plans with
endless talk. The last time I travelled to Malerkotla, some four
years ago, the entire trip had been hijacked twice: first by my
poet-friend Manjit Tiwana, and then by Mr Rafi.
Manjit, instead of taking me directly to Malerkotla, had
driven me miles away in the opposite direction, towards a sacred
grove. We would soon be at the dera of Baba Marhu Das, she
said. ‘My mother would go to him, holding my hand, to ask for
the boon of a son. I was the fifth daughter and my mother had
to suffer many tortures for not bearing a son…’ When we
reached Marhu Das di Gufa, it became clear to me that Manjit
had imagined all the treks with her mother to the Baba’s cave.
Marhu Das had died long before the mother was born. When we
finally arrived at my intended destination, Manjit took me to a
complimentary dinner with Rafi at Coronet Restaurant, which is
part of his family business. In exchange, we became his captive
viewers and were shown painting after painting from among the
hundreds he had made, listening to him talk about them till late
into the night. Shortly after that meeting Rafi gave an interview
to a regional daily and went on record saying that he was the
richest man in Punjab because he had so much art. The story
appeared with the headline ‘Richest Man in Punjab’, and the
Income-Tax Department conducted a raid at his home. All they
found were mountains of canvases that he himself had painted,
and closed the file.
These days, I hear, Rafi heads the new Urdu Akademi in
Malerkotla. I will meet him only at the end of the trip: risking
a meeting at the beginning may mean putting off my book by
a few more years—and I’ve had quite enough of my wayward
nature. Years ago, after I brought my first love story to its
unhappy conclusion, I decided that it was ‘novel’ material. I had
barely written some fifty pages when the second real-life romance
began… and so on. This became a pattern. The dilemma always
was whether to write of the past love or to live the next one.
Now, with the storms of youth behind me, I could do without
distractions and actually finish the book I’d promised to write on
Punjab, perhaps my only enduring love.
It takes me close to an hour to begin my journey out of
Chandigarh. There is no direct bus to Malerkotla, and the
connecting one to Morinda is reluctant to leave the terminal. It
is full, with a whole lot people standing, and arguments have
erupted between passengers with seat numbers and those without.
One wise sardar tries to quash it all by saying, ‘We are not going
to Canada. Morinda is just two furlongs away, what do we need
seat numbers for?’ The driver, at least, sees the sense in this and
starts the bus. We reach Morinda early enough and I catch a
bright red semi-deluxe bus to Malerkotla. The pictures and
motifs decorating the front of the bus spell pluralism with a
capital P. Framed paintings of Guru Nanak and Guru Gobind
Singh, the first Guru and the tenth, have pride of place. Then
there are paintings of some saints and mendicants: Sai Baba,
Kabir, Sant Kirpal Singh. Bhagat Singh appears in a calendar-art
portrait on the toolbox, donning his famous hat and with two
peacocks flanking him on either side. In the left corner are
etchings of the Cross, the Om and Ik-Onkar. Pasted at the
bottom of the glass partition between the driver and the passengers
is a picture of Punjab’s first and greatest Sufi poet, Sheikh Farid.
And above him, a much bigger picture of the Sahibzadas, two
cherubic boys in the court of the stone-hearted nawab of Sirhind.
The TV in the bus is beaming a comedy show. Chacha, the
anchor, cracks jokes mostly at the cost of the second sex and the
accompanying starlet makes funny faces but does not laugh.
Now Chacha is taking a dig at women drivers. To prove his
point, he conjures a sleek little red car and a life-size cutout of
Sonia Gandhi. ‘Sonia Gandhi knew she could never drive this
country, so she put Sardar Manmohan Singh on the driver’s
seat!’ At this, a small cutout of a mousy Manmohan Singh pops
up on the front seat and the laughter of the passengers mixes
with the taped guffaws.
That the country now has a Sikh Prime Minister, that a bus
can carry Sikh, Hindu and Muslim religious symbols side by side
and people can travel without fear is enough to make you forget
how much violence Punjab has suffered. Just as, during the
darkest days of Partition, of militancy and state crackdown in the
1980s, it was easy to forget that Sikh history also has a strong
tradition of communal harmony and humanism. There is no
place where this is most apparent than in Malerkotla, where
Muslims—who comprise roughly seventy per cent of the
population—Hindus and Sikhs have lived in peace for centuries.
The most celebrated event in the town’s history dates back
over 300 years. Guru Gobind Singh, the founder of the Khalsa,
had earned the wrath of Mughal officials who saw him and his
creed as a threat to their empire. Constant harassment and
persecution forced the Guru and his closest followers to finally
leave Anandpur, the seat of the Khalsa, on the night of 5
December 1704. During the long trek, the Guru’s two youngest
sons, nine-year-old Sahibzada Zorawar Singh and six-year-old
Sahibzada Fateh Singh, and his mother, Mata Gujri, were
separated from him. Their own cook betrayed them and the
three were captured and taken to Sirhind. Nawab Wazir Khan,
the Mughal governor of Sirhind, ordered them walled alive
unless they embraced Islam. The Guru’s sons would not accept
conversion and the worst happened on the morning of 27
December 1704. The only protest against such a fate for the
innocent boys had come from Nawab Sher Mohammad Khan of
Malerkotla. The letter he wrote to Aurangzeb in Delhi is still in
the proud possession of his heirs. Sher Mohammad wrote: ‘The
Governor of Sirhind province, with a view to avenging the
disobedience of the Guru….has without any fault or crime of
the guiltless and innocent children, simply on the basis of their
being the scions of Guru Gobind Singh, condemned them to
execution and has proposed to wall them up till they die…. This
action appears to me to be absolutely against the dictates of
Islam and the laws propounded by the founder of Islam (May
Allah’s blessings be showered upon Him). Your Majesty’s servant
is afraid that the enactment of such an atrocity will be an ugly
blot on the face of Your Majesty’s renowned justice and
righteousness….’
Neither Wazir Khan nor Aurangzeb heeded this voice of
sanity. When news of the tragedy reached the Guru, he was
weeding grass at Talwandi Sabu, where he had taken refuge. His
first reaction, they say, was to announce that he would tear out
the roots of his adversaries. Then he asked, ‘Did no one cry out
in protest?’ When informed of the lone resistance of the nawab
of Malerkotla, the Guru said, ‘His roots will forever be green.’
The bus passes the picturesque gurdwara at Fatehgarh Sahib,
where the Sahibzadas met their end. Retribution came when
Banda Bahadur, a disciple of the tenth Guru at Nanded in
Maharashtra, rode across half the country and razed the fort of
Sirhind and killed Wazir Khan. A memorial was built at Fatehgarh
to the two Sahibzadas and their grandmother (who died of shock
shortly after her grandsons were bricked alive). In 1746, Maharaja
Karam Singh of Patiala built Gurdwara Fatehgarh on the site.
The eastern gate of the gurdwara was dedicated to the memory
of the nawab of Malerkotla.
I have been to Fatehgarh several times before, but for other
reasons. The district of Fatehgarh Sahib along with Kurukshetra
in Haryana and Kangra in Himachal forms the triangle of
religious districts where the female to male sex ratio is the lowest
in the country. This, too, is Punjab.
We are moving into Sirhind, when the conductor informs me
that I should get off at Khanna and take another bus, since the
one we are on will now by-pass Malerkotla and head straight for
Ludhiana. It is a while before a bus for Malerkotla arrives. There
are very few passengers and I get a seat all to myself. The drive
is beautiful. The narrow road is nearly traffic-free and lined on
both sides with shisham and kikar trees. The orange ball of the
setting sun accompanies the bus, almost right through, suspended
above a fine picture of pastoral Punjab. My eyes are soothed.
But my heart is uneasy. It is getting late and there is no way
I can return to Patiala to spend the night at Manjit’s, as I had
planned. Where will I stay? I really should have got in touch
with Deepak before starting. Deepak, the nawab of my erstwhile
love life. For me many towns, villages and journeys have an
emotional quotient all in the wrong measure. Anyway, the lost
Deepak connection might just be some use….Just then, my
friend Vijaya calls—‘As soon as you reach, call Azad and he will
come and pick you up.’
It is dark when Azad comes to fetch me at the bus stand. He
is younger than I’d imagined, and quite affable, although a little
disappointed that I have not brought Rani Balbir Kaur’s telephone
number with me. He’s a great fan of the Chandigarh-based
theatre star. He drives me straight to the rancid-smelling restaurant
of a rundown hotel, where we settle down for an excellent meal
of dal makhani, mixed vegetables and hot tandoori rotis. ‘I was
hoping you’d bring me Rani Balbir Kaur’s number,’ Azad
complains, but pleasantly enough. ‘Now that our Badal Akali
Dal has come to power, we want to make her a chairperson of
one of the corporations or foundations. Something befitting her
talent and stature.’ Young Azad is the general secretary of the
party for Sangrur district. ‘The seat here has gone to Razia Sultan
of the Congress again, but at least our party will form the
ministry in Chandigarh, thanks to the BJP.’
I tell Azad that I’m happy to stay at this hotel, but he will
have none of it. He has decided to take charge of my life. He
takes me to another, recently built hotel called Maharaja Palace.
The room is passable and the attached bathroom clean. Azad
likes it more than I do and parks himself in one of the two
ornate chairs by the bed. He has asked a member of Malerkotla’s
famous Sherwani family to visit us and tell me all about the Sufi
tradition of the town. The Sherwani heir is late in coming, so
Azad narrates his own hard-luck-to-success story, at one time the
quintessential Punjabi story of resilience, hard work and pride,
before immigration became the dream narrative. ‘I am the eldest
of six children,’ Azad says. ‘My father was a poor man, he
repaired bags. He educated me up to Class X and then I set up
my own shop and worked hard repairing bags. Now I have two
shops, a school and I head a number of NGOs. I did my Plus
II privately. My brothers run the business now and I have time
to be in politics.’ He has fixed the marriage of one of his sisters
recently and is planning to marry an educated Muslim girl
himself, someone who will help him in his politics and business.
Then it is his turn to question me. When in Punjab, you
should be prepared for all kinds of invasions, including of your
privacy. It is one big village where everyone should know
everything about the other and especially about a woman who
travels alone and is not afraid of staying in a hotel all by herself.
He wants to know my age. I tell him that it is a complete pack
of cards minus the jokers and he exclaims, ‘But you don’t look
it! You look only thirty-five!’ I’m quite sure this remark isn’t
meant to be taken seriously, yet it more than makes up for the
tiring journey and his inquisitiveness. Then he wants to know
why I am not married and somehow it slips that the man I
wanted to marry would not marry me. ‘Oh! So you are the
victim of a failed love affair!’ he says brightly. ‘Just so!’ I reply,
and now I am no longer a mystery to him and before I know it
he has offered to stay the night with me in the hotel. Amazed,
I wonder what he wants but it is only his small-town politeness,
for he soon adds, ‘I want that you should not be inconvenienced
in any way.’ ‘No, no, you shouldn’t worry,’ I say. ‘I am used to
staying alone and I quite like it.’ He frowns.
At last the fifteenth-generation Shehzada of the Sherwani
family arrives with his family tree and photocopies of documents
relevant to the history of Malerkotla. Shehzada Ajmal Khan
Ajmal Sherwani is an earnest young man in his mid-thirties and
lives off the legacy of agri farms and stud farms. He writes poetry
and has just returned after reading his verses at a poetry symposium
in Jalandhar. There he recited verses in the secular tradition of
his hometown. He recites one for me: Mera watan, ke hai
phoolon ka ek guldasta/ Ham ise pyar ke guldaan mein sajaenge
(My country is a bouquet of flowers and we will adorn it in the
vase of love). Not memorable poetry, but at least the thought is
as noble as his ancestry.
With Shehzada as the narrator, we go back some 600 years to
understand the history of this unique town. Malerkotla is one of
the oldest states in Punjab. It came up almost a hundred years
before Babur established Mughal rule in India. History
authenticates that a Sherwani Afghan of Daraban, Sheikh
Saddaruddin Sardar-I-Jahan, was spiritually inclined from his
boyhood. In 1449, he reached Multan and became the disciple
of Pir Bahawal Shah. When the Pir was sure that his disciple was
well versed in spirituality, he asked him to go out and help
humanity. Sheikh Saddaruddin chose a raised mound near the
old village of Maler to build his hut, and there he spent his time
in prayer.
One night, Bahlol Lodhi camped at Maler on his way to
conquer Delhi. It was a stormy night and the only lamp aflame
was in the hut on the mound. Bahlol went to meet the man
whose lamp the harsh winds could not extinguish. Sheikh
Saddaruddin, whom we know today as Hazrat Sheikh, welcomed
Bahlol into his hut and prophesied that Delhi would indeed be
his. When Bahlol accomplished his mission, he returned to
thank this man of God. The thanksgiving included marriage to
his daughter Taj Murassa and a gift of Maler and the surrounding
villages and three lakh rupees in dowry. This was in 1454.
Some years later the Sheikh married again, this time Murtaza
‘Rajan’, daughter of Rai Behram, a ruler of Kapurthala.
Interestingly, Sheikh Saddaruddin bequeathed the Sufi tradition
to the lineage from his first wife and the dominion to the lineage
from his second. Showing me a detailed chart of the genealogy,
Shehzada says, ‘I belong to the line that inherited the Sufi
tradition. I know it all. Journalists come here and meet all the
wrong people. They go back and quote rickshaw-wallahs and
chai-wallahas. What would they know?’ I think of asking the
young Shehzada if he’s sure he has inherited the Sufi heritage
and not the dominion after all, but then let it be.
A grandson of Hazrat Sheikh founded the province of
Malerkotla, the Shehzada goes on. His name was Mohammad
Bayazid Khan. He saved the life of Emperor Aurangzeb from an
approaching tiger and rose to a high rank in the Mughal court.
He got recognition as an independent ruler and was granted the
right to build a defensive wall and a fort and thus kotla (fort) was
added to the original name, Maler. In keeping with the Sufi
traditions of his family, Bayazid Khan asked a Sufi saint, Shah
Fazl Chishti, and a Hindu sadhu, Damodar Das, to lay the
foundation stone. As the old folks say, because the foundation
was secular, religious tolerance came to be the key word, and as
long as the fort wall stands, there can be no communal discord
here.
The last nawab of Malerkotla, Iftikhar Ali Khan, in spite of
his four wives, died childless at the age of seventy-eight in 1982.
While his first three wives were of nawabi descent, his fourth
wife Sajida Begum was a local Punjabi Pathan girl. She was big,
bold and beautiful and after the nawab died she took a couple
of more husbands. She was also linked with Giani Zail Singh,
the former President, who came to visit her many times. Rumours
abounded. The Satirist Gurnam Singh Tir even wrote a popular
mock-ballad, a la Heer-Ranjha, about the two. Our Shehzada,
however, is keen to make saints of the dead. ‘You know, Sajida
Begum was considered a sister by Gianiji. He came to meet her
every year so she could tie a rakhi on him,’ he says.
Gianiji—like the Akali leader Surjit Singh Barnala—also
had a special place in his heart for Master Jivana, a celebrated
tailor of the town, and would get all his coats and sherwanis
stitched by him. The best tailors, as someone said to me, will be
found in the gentlest, most laidback places where leisure is given
its due. The laidback nature of the Malerkotla riyasat is evident
from the fact that the last nawab refused a pre-Independence
proposal to upgrade the railway station to a junction so that the
people would not be disturbed at night. The junction came up
instead at nearby Dhuri town.
*
My hosts leave for the night, wishing me shabba khair. A
smattering of Urdu words in the Punjabi of Malerkotla makes
their language far sweeter than that in other parts of Malwa.
Alone, I pull the gold-and-brown tiger-stripe quilt over myself.
But sleep is elsewhere, and I get into communion with
Malerkotla’s ghosts and my own. Memories rise and glide right
through the survivor’s armour of forgetfulness. I think of my
childhood in Chandigarh. Silence was the lot of children born in
the decade after Partition. Parents did not wish to pass the
madness and horror to their children. I had never seen a Muslim
till my mother took me with her to Pakistan, to visit her sister
who had stayed on. I was surprised to see apparitions draped in
black. I pointed to one and asked my mother, ‘What is this?’ She
laughed and replied, ‘This is a lady!’
I was to see many such ladies, bearded men, young boys in
skull caps and Muslims who spoke Punjabi in Pakistan. But
through childhood I continued to believe that there were no
Punjabi Muslims in India. Perhaps because the elders always
said, ‘They all went to Pakistan.’ Years later, I learnt that while
a few million had indeed migrated, thousands of others had been
butchered, even in the villages that were grouped to form the city
of Chandigarh. Many of those who stayed on had to take Hindu
and Sikh identities. In Manimajra, a village of Chandigarh,
several Muslims returned to their original names only some fifty
years after Partition. Recently, I shared these thoughts while
reading a paper on Partition literature in Lahore, and theatre
activist Madeeha Gauhar responded that she could identify with
what I said. She too had grown up thinking that there were no
Punjabi Hindus in Lahore.
*
Deeper into the night, still sleepless, I think of Deepak. His
village, Mubarakpur Chungan, is just seven kilometres from
Malerkotla. I should have called him before coming here, but I’d
hesitated because the last time he called me, some years ago, I
had cursed him and banged the telephone down. On an impulse,
now, I dial his number. His sleepy voice answers and then I hear
the receiver being slammed back. I chuckle, thinking that it is
fortunate we did not marry after all. Our body clocks just did not match.
The singing mobile wakes me early the next morning. It is
Deepak, and when he learns that I am in Malerkotla, he is most
offended that I didn’t take his help. ‘What a beautiful city and
what culture!’ he exclaims. ‘Rehmat qawwal would cast a spell
with his Sufiana qalam. Anno Jaan and Zarina Jaan were the two
most famous and sought after tawaifs of the town…’ I listen to
him go on excitedly about the Sufis and qawwals and dancing
girls of Malerkotla and wonder if I’d only imagined him hanging
up on me last night.
‘You know, while I was studying there, a tall young man
with film-hero looks would come to play hockey in the college
grounds. He was a tubewell mechanic. His clothes were very
colourful and we would laugh at him. Later he went to Bombay
and became the famous film star Dharmendra. The photographs
he sent for the 1958 Filmfare talent hunt contest were taken at
John’s Studio in Sadar Bazaar. Some years ago when I went to
Bombay to invite him for a World Punjabi Conference and told
him I was from Malerkotla district, he wouldn’t let me leave and
kept talking of the old times for two hours. I could understand—
there was something magical about Malerkotla when we were
growing up. I still roam in my dreams in the lost grandeur of
Moti Bazaar…. Have you been there yet?’
Later that morning I visit the various heritage monuments
the city boasts, but it is heritage going to seed. Most well tended
is the spacious Idgah, which the residents of the town say is the
best in Asia. The famed Sheesh Mahal, which was the home of
Sajida Begum, is in shambles. After the death of the begum
many claimants turned up and the government was forced to seal
it, pending the dispute being settled, which may take decades.
The glory of the Purana Mahal is lost. Much of its land and
outhouses have been sold and new colonies of match-box
apartments surround it. Many no longer call it the palace. They
call it Tonk-wala Bangla, for it is now little more than a
bungalow. In this palace of yore lives the frail and ailing but still
beautiful Tonk-wali Begum, one of the four begums of the last
nawab.
Tonk was a princely state of Rajasthan given to Amir Khan,
a freebooter of Afghan descent and a Pindari leader, after he
submitted to the British during the 1817 Pindari wars. Nawab
Iftikhar Ali Khan’s initial connection with Tonk was hunting,
his great passion. His hunting trips would take him away from
Malerkotla for long periods, to Kandaghat in Himachal Pradesh
and to Tonk. On one of his hunting expeditions he lost his heart
to Munawar-u-nissa, the comely princess of Tonk, and took her
as his second wife. Mohammad Mehmood, who along with his
family is in the service of the begum, says: ‘My father served her
and now my family and I look after her. Nawab Sahib spent the
longest part of his life with her. They also had a baby girl but
she passed away when she was but six days old. I have seen the
begum since my childhood and she is the kindest person in the
world.’ The sword and the hukamnama of gratitude gifted to
Nawab Sher Mohammad Khan by Guru Gobind Singh are in
her possession. Much else is lost, but the begum lives with
dignity in the evening of her life.
Moti Bazaar and Laal Bazaar, built on the designs of the
bazaars of Jaipur, are being eclipsed by crude contemporary
construction. Only a few of the old shops with carved balconies
still remain as slender proof of the old grandeur. Every second
shop is an embroidery shop now, because the town has a
flourishing cottage industry embroidering army and police badges.
All over the bazaar I see election posters of the recently elected
Razia Sultan flanked by Punjab Congress leader Rajinder Kaur
Bhattal and the ‘Maharani’ of Patiala, Parneet Kaur. Razia is a
local Gujjar girl, acclaimed for her beauty, who worked with
Sajida Begum in her younger days and is now married to a senior
Punjab police officer. To my joy, I discover John’s Studio in
Sadar Bazaar. Its owner who had clicked Dharam Bhaji’s pictures
is no more but his son still runs the studio.
The mazaar of Sheikh Hazrat at the entrance to the bazaars
in old Maler is a shocking sight in a town that prides itself on
its Sufi heritage. Someone had thought of renovating it but had
clearly given up long ago, and there is a great mess of refuse and
building material. Families of the old Afghans still live around
the mazaar, clearly oblivious to its slow ruin.
‘The local Muslims respect the saint but do not believe in
him because they are Islamic,’ says left-wing Punjabi writer S.
Tarsem. He has taught a lifetime in a local college and knows the
town like the back of his hand. ‘However, the mazaar has a great
following among Hindus and Sikhs all the way from Barnala to
Bathinda. They come in hundreds all year round and in thousands
at the time of the Urs.’ I’m ambivalent about the faith of these
thousands who come to the mazaar. I know that a large majority
come to seek the saint’s blessings for a male child. Some years
ago this had led to a strange phenomenon: Kade-wala Baba. He
set up shop behind the Idgah and gave couples iron kadas that
would guarantee a male child. His fame spread, and people from
all over the country started coming to him for the kada in
exchange for generous offerings in cash and kind. The one train
that passed the town began to halt at his dera. It is said he
distributed a lakh and twenty-five thousand bangles before some
wise men of the town drove him away (the cynical maintain that
they were provoked to act because the savvy sadhu’s growing
fame meant that less and less people came to Sheikh Hazrat’s
mazaar).
*
Sitting with Tarsem at his home I ask him if there has indeed
never been a single case of religious violence in his town. He
replies that I could wait another 100 years if that was what I
wanted to see and I would still be disappointed. There’s something
in the air of Malerkotla, he says, something in its soil that
changes men of hate. ‘In those days of ’46-’47, people were being
killed just two yards outside our territory, but anyone who
entered, Hindu, Sikh or Muslim, was miraculously saved. There
was no violence here even after the felling of the Babri Masjid in
’92, even though nearly seventy per cent of the population is
Muslim. The people here are peace-loving and if ever there is any
attempt by any mischievous forces it is suppressed well in time.’
Sardar Balwant Singh, who was the minister of law and order in
Malerkotla during Partition, records in his account of the times:
‘About one lakh Muslims from other parts of Punjab took shelter
here. Not a single killing took place… All the Muslims who
converged at Malerkotla were safely sent to Pakistan with the
assistance of Sardar Patel. A battalion of the army was sent to
help the migrants across.’
Deepak tells me later that he went with the other boys of his
village to Dhuri, ten kilometres away, to see what was absent in
40
Nirupama Dutt
Malerkotla—killing and looting. ‘Wells were choked with bodies
and Muslim homes were being looted. I saw a bull in one home.
I liked it, so I brought it back to my village.’ Once a looter
always a looter, I say and have the last laugh.
The visit to Tarsem’s house proves to be a turning point in
the unfolding of the Malerkotla mystique. He gives me a short
story titled ‘Nath’ written by Chandigarh-based writer Mohan
Bhandari. Another gift is the novella Anup Kaur by late Harnam
Das Sehrai who wrote scores of novels in Punjabi, all based on
Sikh history. Bhandari’s story is a quasi-fictional account of the
unhappy lives of the glittering courtesans of Malerkotla. Bhandari
writes: ‘I visited Anno Jaan’s kotha once with my friend Shauqat,
to see the new kabootri who had been brought there. Shauqat
and the young girl lost their hearts to each other. Of course, they
could never come together because a man old enough to be her
father removed her nath (nose-ring) and deflowered her… When
we resurrect feudal times, we must not forget the ugliness.’
For me the dilemma comes with Anup Kaur, and puts me
in a predicament too, as I chronicle the history of this principality.
But that happens later, when I read the novel at night. That
evening, I am still trying to contact the missing Azad who had
promised to take me to meet the surviving heirs of the famed
Mirasi performing tradition. When I finally get him on the
phone, he says, ‘I will bring everyone to the hotel.’ I try to reason
that my going to meet them would be a better idea; I’d like to
see them in their environment. There’s a stony silence at the
other end. There goes my chance to visit old Maler at night
where, Azad has told me, stalls of tea, paan-beedi, sweets and
frothy milk that they call doodh-malai remain open till the wee
hours. I could have done with a nice hot tumbler of frothy milk
after the rounds of the day. Maybe I can ask him to take me out
after we’ve met the Mirasis.
Azad comes late in the evening with two strapping young
men for me to interview. They are local bodybuilders! The older
of the two is a dark and stocky trainer called Mohammad Sharif
Boss and the other hulk, Mumtaz Ahmad Tony, has the startling
good looks of Dharmendra. He has also been Mr Punjab. What
follows is a treatise on physical fitness, bodybuilding and the
powerful Punjabi physique. Boss tells me that once at the Lal
Qila in Delhi a police officer stopped the two of them and asked,
‘Are you from Punjab? You can’t be locals, we see only ill-fed
chhachhunders here.’ Tony adds, ‘Bodybuilders don’t have to
introduce themselves. Their bodies tell the tale.’ Together they
run the local Great Sports and Welfare Club and help young
men give up alcohol, drugs and tobacco. Besides, they are proud
advertisements of Punjabi health and well-being, and get paid for
that.
Happily, Sardar Ali of the Mirasi village of Matoi arrives
and the conversation shifts from the body to the soul. Sardar
belongs to the lineage of Ustad Chanan Shah, his grandfather,
and Ustad Abdul Majid Khan, his father. He talks reverentially
of the late Ustad Barqat Husain of the Patiala Gharana who lived
here, and the late Rehmat Qawwal. Barqat Husain’s wife Salma
was famous in her own right as a ghazal singer, but she too is
dead, and I lose my chance of meeting a woman of substance;
the entire milieu is oppressively masculine here. Sardar says
disapprovingly, ‘Ustad Sahib should not have married her. She
was raised in the tawaif tradition. However, he lost his heart to
her when he had gone to Uttar Pradesh for a concert. He was
very young then.’ Sardar, very young himself, but utterly sure of
his heart, is an ambitious fellow. He tells me he will soon
establish the Abdul Majid Institute of Music and Art, named
after his father. The conversation meanders to this and that, and
somehow the young men start reciting a few couplets of Urdu
for my benefit in their pronounced Punjabi accent. I have said
earlier that the smattering of Urdu sweetens the Punjabi spoken
in Malerkotla. But the Punjabi lehaza does nothing for the Urdu
they speak.
Shero-o-shairi over, the moral gang of four robs me of my
tumbler of frothy milk at old Maler—I can’t be part of their
night out. ‘We cannot take you there,’ Azad says decisively. ‘It
is not proper. This is a Muslim town and women stay in
purdah.’ This is the end. Angry words gather at the tip of my
tongue. He’ll never have Rani Balbir Kaur’s telephone number;
at least not from me. I remain in my zenana of Maharaja Palace,
sipping bland chicken soup and wishing myself in Lahore, where
I would be one among many women without purdah, enjoying
the fare at Food Street on Nisbat Road past midnight. In fact,
right now I wouldn’t even mind reclining at Mocha Café in
Chandigarh, having my masala tea and able to think kindly of
Punjab.
This is the mood I take to my reading of Anup Kaur that
night. While the stories of the Sahibzadas, the Nawab and
Hazrat Sheikh are well known, I have never heard any mention
of Anup Kaur in all that I have been told about Malerkotla. But
women have strange ways of reaching out and this young woman
smuggles herself into my khwabgah, my refuge of dreams, in a
slim novella. She completes my journey. The novella, written
like a lascivious pamphlet, tells the story of the resistance of a
beautiful young girl called Anup Kaur, an expert warrior and a
friend of the Sahibzadas. Abducted by Nawab Sher Mohammad
Khan, the same man who stood up courageously to defend the
Sahibzadas, she chose to thrust a dagger into her breast rather
than change her faith and marry him. The novella says that
Anup’s soul haunts the palace of the nawab and does not allow
him a wink of sleep even in death, as she didn’t all the years that
he was alive. I don’t know how the nawab coped, but my sleep
is gone.
The ghost of the unborn, unfulfilled, oppressed womanhood
is to chase me all through my journey in Punjab. For the
moment, I dismiss Anup’s story, the blot on the celebrated
nawab’s reputation. This is all fiction, I tell myself. Later,
though, I find references to this girl in several Sikh texts and in
the writings of historian Ganda Singh. The historian says that
when Banda Bahadur came to avenge the murder of the
Sahibzadas, he razed Sirhind to the ground but did not destroy
Malerkotla because of that one cry of protest by the nawab.
However, he exhumed the body of Anup, cremated it according
to Sikh rites, and set her soul to rest. Few people remember her;
no one rose in her defence.
The following morning, Azad asks me to stop by his school,
and there he introduces me to the young Hindu and Muslim
teachers. As we talk, the subject of purdah comes up. Not all the
teachers support the practice. Azad intervenes to pronounce:
‘Women must remain in purdah. That is the right thing for
them. No boy will ever harass a girl wearing a burqa.’
On my way out of the town, I spot a small crowd at the
mazaar of Hazrat Sheikh. Men and women praying for a male
child—and does the saint grant their wish each time? Is Anup
Kaur’s soul really at rest?
Yet, the legend of Malerkotla lives on. Perhaps it is not for
individuals to judge. Human existence is never without its flaws;
even one act of kindness, however small, is a gift to be grateful
for. In the crowded bus that takes the route from Amargarh and
Nabha to reach Patiala, I look back with love at Malerkotla that
still shows hope for humanity, never mind its failings. There is
some charm in the remnants of decadent Nawabi honour. I can’t
deny the fondness I feel for the righteous Azad, the bodybuilders,
the sanctimonious Mirasi singer and the fifteenth-generation
Shehzada who might one day learn to love the rickshaw-wallahs
and chai-wallahs. Kind thoughts fly to Tarsem, Rafi-ul-art and
that damned Deepak, too. The turmoil of the night is over and
calm is settling in as I journey back home. Does it have
something to do with the Sufi way in Malerkotla? The rough
rustic song playing in the bus wants to know: Kehde yaar di jalebi
khaadi, Hunn bada mittha boldi (Which lover’s fed you a jalebi
that you speak so sweetly now)? All right, I’ll send Azad Rani’s
number after all. And I think I will be back for that tumbler of
milk in old Maler. And a jalebi to sweeten my tongue.