The title of Renuka Nidagundi’s new book ‘Amrutha Nenapugalu’ suggests that the book is a collection of memories of Amrita Pritam, but it literally means fond/immortal (amrutha) memories (nenapugal). In this book of conversation with Imroz, as the words are woven into sentences, sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into pages , one realizes that the book is not just Imroz’s fond memories of Amrita, but also Renuka’s fond memories of her conversations with Imroz.
But this book is not just about memories, but also about love and longing. Amrita’s love and longing for Sahir, a narrative which is unavoidable, the longing of Imroz for Amrita. All in all, this book where the memory is only a pretext, is a book of multiple loves in which one can see various shades of love: Sahir’s inability to love, Amrita’s passionate love, Imroz’s unwaxed divinely love and Renuka’s inaccessible love.
The author recollects an anecdote from Amrita’s childhood. Amrita’s father used to insist that everyone at home reads a chapter from Gurugranth Sahib before going to sleep. He was of the belief that a reading of it will build an invisible castle around the person which evil powers will not be able to cross and sound sleep is guaranteed. Amrita in her autobiography says, ‘Parchaaiyaan bahut badi haqeeqat hoti hai’ and names this ‘parchaayi’ as Rajan who she hopes will cross the castle and invade her dreams. She would try and skip a few lines from the chapter like leaving a small gap in the castle by missing a few bricks, for Rajan to enter.
Narrating this, the author Renuka aynuka wonders who Rajan was -- Sahir or Imroz and says it could be Imroz for it is he who came into her life and stayedOne of the most celebrated poems of Sahir is Parchaaiyaan . And Sahir is actually the one who invades her dreams and Imroz is someone who said, “Tumhaare saath jaaga hoon.” The one who came into her dreams and one who came into her life were different. Why didn’t his love for Amrita did not translate itself into a relationship or companionship? What is the distance, pointed by Imroz, that Sahir couldn’t cover? There cannot be one answer to this.
In Sahir’s biography by Akshay Manwani, we get to see quite a few possible reasons.
Kaifi Azmi points at the inferiority complex that Sahir suffered with because of his not-so-pleasant looks. Javed Akhtar points at the, “strange, unhealthy, even complicated,” relationship Sahir shared with his mother which Khushwant Singh bluntly calls, “mother-fixationThis could have stemmed from his average looks which Kaifi Sahab points at. But then Imroz, in Akshay Manwani’s book, speaks of the distressed upbringing and troubled childhood which could have crippled him.
Caught in all this, Sahir, the one who gave all of us our anthems of love and pain of love, was crippled emotionally and cursed by some sort of inability to love, which cost not just him but also his mother, who wanted to see him happy in a relationship and obviously Amrita Pritam. In the initial pages of this book by Renuka, we hear Imroz speaking of some mundane things. Imroz speaks of Amrita and him doing household things together -- him bringing groceries, she cooking, him getting her cigarettes being a non-smoker, him preparing her cups of tea at ungodly hours in the night and him picking up her kids from the school in the afternoon for lunch while she cooked.
Speaking of Sahir to Akshay Manwani, Imroz says, “It’s just that a creative woman was drawn towards another very talented man.” The true test of any relationship is the everydayness. Of which Imroz was a partner. The book also gives some sociological glimpses: the popularity of cinema of those days, the usage of lingua-franca Urdu by commoners, the Hindu-Muslim divide (separate glasses for Hindu and Muslims in Amrita’s house) and the houses allotted to refugees in Delhi.
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Aharnishi releases Uri by Vinaya and Amruta Nenapulgalu by Renuka Nidagundu, Vidyavardhaka Sangha, Dharwad, Sunday, 10.30 a.m
