by Nirupama Dutt
Goddess Saraswati seems to be looking Ludhiana ’s way this year with the prestigious Saraswati Sammān (awarded annually for outstanding Indian works of prose or poetry) going to a poet of that city, Surjit Patar.
The fact is that there is much more to Ludhiana than the butter chicken that Pankaj Mishra, of Butter Chicken in Ludhiana fame, immortalised. Punjab’s Manchester is known for its hosiery industry, its cycle factories, its business money, the agricultural university, migrant labourers by the thousands who come on trains nicknamed Bhayia Express, the filthy sewer that runs through the old town, and rampant pollution. Yet this familiar picture of Ludhiana misses one important aspect: the fact that the city has been home to a large number of poets in modern times, with Sahir, famed Hindi film lyricist who bore the city’s name, topping the list.
The first Journey
Most of my journeys to Ludhiana have been in one way or the other related to poetry except perhaps the first. But no, I am wrong. Perhaps the first was the most poetic. Instead of going into the details, I will just quote a few lines of a poem I wrote a decade-and-a-half after visiting the city for the first time:
What couldn’t I have done this season of late rains
right from singing Raga Malhār to penning an epic poem
I could even have borrowed a flame orange dress from a friend/ worn a pair of dark glasses and stealthily boarded a bus to Ludhiana
just like fifteen years ago when I had returned home desolate…
I am desolate these days too from another Ludhiana that has sprung up in Chandigarh …
The first time I visited Ludhiana in 1977, I was positively thrilled to see the welcome signboard outside the city, which read: Ji aaean nu. This is a pure Punjabi greeting and blessing which defies translation into English. It just conveys a very heartfelt welcome, Punjabi style. Many cities in Punjab bear the welcome sign of Jee aaean nu. One does not always notice them, but sometimes the heart skips a beat and one thinks – this here is an earnest welcome posted just for me.
Since the address that I was looking for in Ludhiana did not exist, I visited instead the home of my love’s friend, Surjit Patar, who along with other friends cheered me up with words and food. This celebrated master of the Punjabi couplet then lived in a small bachelor’s pad near Gate No: 3 of the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) where he was a research scholar in the Department of Languages and Culture. Mohan Singh, the poet, also spent his last decade at the PAU , where he was poet emeritus.
The tradition of Punjabi poetry is a multilingual tradition – Faiz wrote in Urdu and Amrita Pritam in Punjabi. Regardless of language, Urdu poetry greatly influenced Punjabi poetry in the last century. Sahir and Patar both grew out of the classical tradition of Urdu poetry established by Mir and Ghalib, though Sahir wrote in Urdu and Patar writes in Punjabi.
My first journey to Ludhiana was one of heartbreak but also of poetic acquaintance. Patar is heir to the poetic tradition of this city and is full of Ludhiana lore. He once recounted how, when Sahir was asked how he wrote so many film songs, the poet answered with a laugh that there was not much to a film song, he could write one in ten puffs of a cigarette. Patar added, “Those days he took the princely sum of Rs 10,000 for a song so each puff of his cigarette was worth a thousand rupees.” Patar is a poet of the classical tradition who chooses contemporary issues as his theme. One of his finest poems was written at the time of the Naxalite movement of which he was a sympathiser: It is difficult to return home now, who will recognise us? /Death has left its signature on our foreheads/ Friends have trodden on our faces/Someone else glances back from the mirror…
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