rathwriteshere

[rathwriteshere]

Feb 6th, 2022 - Amrita, Sahir & Imroz.

“Ae Jism Mukkda Hai, Tan Sab Kuch Mukk Janda,

Par Cheteyan Dey Dhaage, Kaayenaati Kana Dey Hunde.

Main Unha Kana Nu Chunagi, Dhageyan Nu Walangi, Te Tenu Main Phir Milangi.”

“When the body perishes, and everything else perishes too;

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.”

- "Main Tenu Pher Milangi" by Amrita Pritam, Translated by Nirupama Dutt.

Love. An emotion that knows no boundaries, that has made people and broken them, that shows colors of humans unknown to them, also wrote unconventionally heart-wrenching stories. You must have read or heard a gazillion stories about love, from a happily ever after of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to Shakespeare’s tragic Romeo-Juliet. But I’m going to tell you my favorite love story. A story that is wrecked by unrequited love while the ruins are fortified by an unconditional one. A story of cigarettes, love letters, paintings, passion, and poetry. It's the story of India’s greatest poets and artists. It’s the story of Amrita Pritam, Sahir Ludhianvi, and Imroz.

Our story begins in the year 1935 when a mother-less Amrita Pritam got married to a businessman named Pritam Singh at the young age of 16. No clue of what love is and against her will, this marriage was never the one that was meant to be for Amrita. She always dreamt or could even see a wheatish-colored man, blurry face walk with her all the time through all the things. But she could never figure out who was it. But it was all about to be changed in that mushaira on a cold evening in 1944 when a famous young poet was going to charm his way through Amrita’s heart. In 1944, Amrita attended a mushaira in Preet Nagar where her eyes were lit up when it fell on a shy, reserved Sahir in that dimly lit room. As cliché as it may sound, it was love at first sight of two opposite personalities, fiery, gifted with words and beauty, Amrita whereas insecure about his looks, chain-smoker, adorning talent that knew no bounds Sahir.

This cliché love story had just started and was about to take turns unexpected. After their first meet, Sahir would often visit Amrita’s house to meet her and her father who used to run journals. He would sit across her room and lit up a cigarette and won’t utter a single word. It is said that he would stub the half-smoked cigarette and leave, Amrita would collect the buds and put them in her cupboard to feel close to Sahir. Her love for Sahir knew no bounds while being caged in an unhappy marriage. One day, Sahir walked up to her and handed over a paper. He wrote a poem, “Taj Mahal”. Startled Amrita loved the poem but as she returned the paper, he said,” I’m not here to take this poem back.” And left the poem with her.

In 1947, India was torn by Partition. Amrita fled with her family to Delhi while Sahir reached the shores of then Bombay. She said that while leaving her home, she brought only two possessions that mattered to her the most to Delhi, her daughter, and that paper. While trying to build a life in Delhi, she got a job in All India Radio and kept penning her thoughts as stories and poetry. Meanwhile, the entirety of India was taken by storm by the powerful words of a lyricist no one had before, Sahir Ludhianvi. Movies were now being declared hits if they had songs that were written by him. All this while, they kept writing letters to each other. While Amrita kept showering her love, it was rare to see Sahir reciprocate. You see Sahir’s mind was always clouded and filled with various thoughts. He lived all his life after his mother divorced his abusive father when Sahir was very young. His mother had a stronghold on his life. He was always insecure that he wasn’t good looking, had commitment issues. He could never reciprocate what Amrita had for him, although he kept writing love ballads which are said to be based on their uncanny relationship, a more one-sided relationship. A disheartened Amrita thought that nothing could match the kind of love she had for Sahir but little did she know that there was a man who had dedicated his life for Amrita even without her knowing about him. When she started to hunt for artists to paint her book covers, an artist named Imroz stood there waiting for his chance to come. And that’s how she met Imroz.

As time passed by, Sahir started to drift away from Amrita, blame it on his commitment issues and insecurities, or blame it on destiny. But this had a heavy impact on her. She kept writing while traveling in buses to AIR for her job, which Imroz didn't like. He owned a cycle, so he decided to save money to buy a scooter so that he can drop her to the office and back home. He also painted all the book covers for Amrita. She asked him, “Why did I meet you so late in life?” Imroz, who was 10 years younger than Amrita, said, “Maybe because I came off age late or the money came in late.” Once when he was dropping her children at school, he was challan-ed for triple riding, so he simply decided to buy a car. All this was happening while she was unhappily married to Pritam Singh and still dealing with the ruins of the love of Sahir. But none it mattered to Imroz because for him, she was the one. You see human emotions are too complex to understand, it's never white or black, it’s always grey.

Finally, in 1960 she divorced Pritam Singh breaking the cage of marriage, and moved in with Imroz in their newly built Hauz Khas house where she would live with him for the next 40 years in a live-in relationship till her last breath. Amrita had found a new beacon of happiness and hope in the form of Imroz. They never committed, questioned, or labeled their love for each other. They never got married but stayed together like an inseparable couple. Imroz became Amrita’s shadow, devoted his life to her which came at great costs both personally and professionally. But nothing stood before Amrita for him.

Meanwhile, no one could understand what Sahir was going through or felt. He never told anyone what he felt. He was maybe scared to face his own emotions, or maybe he thought that this pain looked better in poetry than in conversations. Years later, in 1964 when Amrita and Imroz visited then Bombay to meet Sahir, he felt emotions that had no answers. But those emotions were later on crafted into a song in “Dooj Ka Chand” that helps you picture a certain shade of Sahir that he could never speak out:

“Mehfil se uth jaane walo, Tum logo par kya ilzam.

Tum aabad gharo ke vasi, Main awaara aur badnaam.”

“People who leave a happy gathering, What blame can I place on you?

You come from prosperous homes, And I am infamous and delusional.”

As years passed by, Amrita moved on with Imroz by her side, as he made her the subject of every painting he ever painted. While Sahir suffered in his own insecurities, shyness, and issues with loneliness and commitments, making him a victim of his mind. It is said that in 1970 when a famous composer Jaidev visited his house, the composer picked up a dirty cup on the shelf and commented about how it should be cleaned. Sahir yelled at once, “Don’t you dare touch that cup. Amrita drank tea from it the last time she was here.” Sahir never got married to anyone. He passed away in 1980 after building a pedestal in the world of literature that no one will ever get to. Meanwhile, Amrita took her last breath in 2005 with Imroz by her side. As she was about to leave Imroz alone and drift into the afterlife, she wrote one of the most memorable pieces of work she has ever written and you might have heard it for sure, “Main Tenu Pher Milangi” which translates to “I will meet you again.”

Why do I love this story? Because it has something for everyone. If you looking for hope, then you can find in the story of how Amrita was destined to find Imroz, her hope walked up to her. If you looking for ways to deal with your pain, you can find it in how Sahir dedicated his entire ordeal to literature and his work, making pearls out of his tears. If you looking for love, you can look into all of them as all of them loved but in their own ways, and it’s up to you to decide which path you want to walk on. This story is a perfect example of how complex human minds can be. So, all we can do is live our life our way, for if things have to happen, they’ll.

I tried my best to translate. But I urge you all to read it in the Hindustani language first. You might have heard of this piece of art being narrated by Amitabh Bachchan.

[rathwriteshere]

Jan 3rd, 2022 - The Story of First Indian Submariners.

Life Update: Can life be more routine and mundane than it is already? It’s a simple yet so complicated question. You have to wake up and earn that rupee. You have to do something that you are not enjoying because survival and independence are what you are looking at as a gift or reward to go through that mundaneness every single day. Yet, we are not questioning why so? Why do survival and independence come at a cost of time, effort, and sacrifice? Shouldn’t they be a right of every organism that breathes? This question branches out to so many other questions. I’ll leave you with that question today. Maybe some other day, my caffeine-struck brain will come with an answer to this child of my own thoughts.

Well, today I’m gonna tell you a story lost in the pages of this encyclopedia called human history. A story that has a tragic beginning and a tragic end. But we won’t talk about either. We’ll just talk about how epic and incredible that picture is. When you look at the picture, you’ll see two men, looking drained. Even as the aura of optimism, valor, and hope radiate out of their faces, it's a story that was never told. You are looking at “the first submariners of India in recorded Indian Military History”. You are looking at “the first civilians in the world to have successfully shifted from one submarine to another on high seas during World War II”. You are looking at Subhash Chandra Bose and Abid Hasan on a German U-boat on their voyage from Germany to Madagascar, where both of them were shifted from the mighty German U-180 to Imperial Japan’s I-29 as they headed to Subang, Indonesia.

The story of this picture begins in a fascist Germany back in 1941. Bose had arrived with the hope that Berlin will back his war against the ever-hungry British Empire. In his two-year stay at Hitler’s Hell, he was always handed a disappointment as the Nazi Supremo never wrote back. After the German Officials kept reassuring him a meet, he finally met the man, Adolf Hitler, who left with a cliffhanger of a word and never assured him the support. A disappointed and angry Bose, who came with hope from a man, who wrote, “I would rather see India under the British than any other, as a German” in his book, decided to leave for Japan by the end of 1942. Japan by now had 10s of 1000s of Indian Soldiers as War Prisoners as they rammed through British-ruled Burma which Bose had his eyes on as the going-to-be Army. To do that, he had to travel from Germany to Japan, where the Indian Independence League took control of INA. And to do that he had to escape the eyes of the British and Axis powers, so this man and Abid decided to take a route they never were trained for, never experienced by any other Indian before. They went underwater. He left his wife and his only child behind back in Germany for this journey of a lifetime. Abid Hasan kept jotting down each moment of this journey in his journal. From an undeterred and curious Bose to consuming bread that looked like it was soaked in diesel, from often being seasick to Bose spending hours reading, writing, and plotting how to deal with the Japanese. Once they reached Madagascar, their rendezvous point, they created history that no one ever read or has been told about. They were shifted from a German Submarine to a Japanese one in broad daylight on the high seas, making them the first-ever civilians to do so during the dark clouds of World War II. Later on, he went on to Japan and made an army to be reckoned with, the “Azad Hind Fauj”. They raged a war against the mighty British and made them taste what Indian fury can do. This glory chapter of his life met a tragic and saddening end when Japan surrendered, forcing him to disband the Fauj.

Why this story should be told? Because of what it projects. The kind of driven and courageous a man can be when his life is all about making his country a free nation. No second thoughts about leaving his family behind, about risking his life, about sacrifices, for all he wanted was to see that his countrymen walk on the streets of his country with a sleeve of freedom that he could never experience throughout his life. He was Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. A freedom fighter, a great leader, a visionary, a man who sacrificed everything for something he didn’t live long enough to see. To him and his struggle, I bow down.

Peace out,

Rath.

[rathwriteshere]

Jan 1st, 2022 - What is this Blog?

Oh, man!

2021 was a hell of a year. Agree or not, it made all of us laugh, cry, feel pity, feel shitty. But we made it through. Maybe, we should give a pat to our backs for surviving it. With our weaker lungs, we know it was going to be difficult. 2021 was a sine curve at its best. A barter system that no one asked for. It was a constant transaction of giving and take, win and loss, smile and tears. We all lost something but we found something too. And the antonym to previous succeeded. But does it really matter in the long run of life? Some of you, reading this, might be older to me, most of you young. But let me tell you as I take on the Michael Jordan year(23rd I meant. Get your pop culture straight if you didn't get that.) of my life, this slap of a year was indeed needed. “Why?”, you ask. It’s pretty simple. A reality check. It was a massive reality check of what were the rights and wrongs. Be it personal life or professional, political ideology, or our school of thoughts. We had enough time to reflect, amend our life choices. Some of us did, some of us didn’t. That doesn't mean it's too late to do it. Because the way Stamford Bridge is still filled to the brim, or the Goa beaches are raining tourists, THIRD WAVE IS COMING.

For 2022? I have zero hopes and expectations. It's not being pessimistic. I’m just being realistic. All I can do is give my best. Make moves like I’m Churchill and this year is my World War II. Why Churchill? I mean keeping aside this tyranny towards Indians, he was a genius in office.

Coming to this blog! It’s just gonna be my public journal of opinions. A way to discuss thoughts and ideas with people. Maybe also a writing exercise. I need a couple of you reading enthusiasts to bash me every day if I don't post. It's a request. I’ll try my best to be consistent and regular. By regular, I mean daily. You can suggest and give me topics to write about. Throw challenges to keep me awake all night. I’ll try my best to deliver.

Why the picture of the cat? Just to remind you that always hold your head high. Be proud of who you are.

Peace out,

Rath.