We never used the word love

Imroz puts his relationship with Amrita Pritam in words

Amrita Chaudhry

Courtesy: Express India

Ludhiana, December 16: Yeh mein hoon, yeh tu hai, aur beech mein hai sapna.

The immortal words in which noted Punjabi litterateur Amrita Pritam once described her relationship with Imroz, a man much younger and a partner for over four decades.

In the city on Saturday, Imroz described Amrita as: “Tuu akhar akhar kavita te kavita kavita zindagi”.

A well-known painter who worked for several Urdu magazines as an illustrator before he joined Amrita Pritam to bring out the renowned Punjabi literary magazine, ‘Nagmani’, Imroz said he took to writing poetry only after Pritam’s death. “Pehlan kavita us vich utradi see te hun kagaz te (earlier, my poetry lived her, and now it does on paper),” he said today.

Talking about his relationship with Pritam, Imroz said: “We never used the word ‘love’ for the two of us. This concept of ‘I love you’ is very filmy, and I never fell in love with Amrita Pritam on first sight.

“We never used the word in either our letters or our works. There was never a need to tell that we loved each other. Yes, when I first met her I realised that she was the kind of woman with whom I could spend the rest of my life. And that’s precisely what we did.

“Another aspect that never existed between us was questioning: we never asked each other where we were headed, or whom we were meeting. We just cared for each other, and that showed.”

Soft-spoken to a fault, talking about himself is something that does not come easy to Imroz. “I am just an ordinary person…like you,” he said.

About traversing between the world of painting and literature, he said: “Words are easy to control, so I would say poetry is easier. Painting, on the other hand, has its own movement, its own language, its own direction. It is very hard to control it.”