Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
She put Punjabi literature on the world map. No other writer is as synonymous with Punjabi literature as Amrita Pritam (1919-2005), a familiar name even for those not acquainted with Punjabi. She cocked a snook at conventShe put Punjabi literature on the world map. No other writer is as synonymous with Punjabi literature as Amrita Pritam (1919-2005), a familiar name even for those not acquainted with Punjabi. She cocked a snook at convention and defied social norms. There was no split between life and literature for Amrita because literature was her life. Gulzar Singh Sandhu on the Grand Dame of Punjabi letters
Your life could be contained on the back of a revenue stamp” was Khushwant Singh’s cynical remark about the autobiography Amrita Pritam was planning to write. A writer of uncommon passion, Amrita responded to the provocative challenge with an aptly titled Rasidi Ticket (Revenue Stamp). The account of her life became so popular that it was translated into half a dozen Indian languages. This much-maligned story of a Punjabi rebel is adored for the manner in which she says what her readers may decry from the core of their hearts. Reading the story one feels that in the male-dominated world, a woman is more sinned against than sinning.
Ajj akhan Waris Shah nu
Kitte kabran vichon bol
Te ajj kitab-e-ishq daion and defied social norms. There was no split between life and literature for Amrita because literature was her life. Gulzar Singh Sandhu on the Grand Dame of Punjabi letters
Koi agla varka phol
Ik royi si dhi Punjab di
Tu likh-likh mare ven
Ajj lakhan dhian rondiyan
Tainu Waris Shah nu kehan
(I call out to Waris Shah today
To speak out from the grave
And open another leaf
From the book of love
When one daughter of
Punjab had wept
You wrote a million dirges
Today a million daughters
are weeping
And they are looking up to you, Waris Shah, for solace)
The novelist in Amrita Pritam was at her best in Pinjar (The Skeleton). The younger generation was introduced to Amrita’s work through this novel which was made into a film sometime back. It is the story of a Hindu girl, Pooro, abducted by a Muslim boy Rashid. Her parents refuse to recover a ‘defiled’ woman. Unable to resist the circumstances she was thrown into, Pooro settles down as a bride and bears Rashid a son. In 1947, nostalgia for the life missed by Pooro makes the couple save Hindu and Sikh women from their Muslim abductors and send them to the security of evacuee camps meant to take them to their kith and kin.
