“A pni kahaani khud nahi sunaogi, to waqt to sunayega hi ” (If you do not narrate your story yourself, then time will, eventually). And time did narrate the story of Punjabi poet and writer Amrita Pritam through a play put together by film director and veteran theatre person M.S. Sathyu and the team of Impresario Asia as part of Bangalore Habba 2012.
Amrita - a Sublime Love Story was a personal account of the poet and her life.
More than portraying her as a poet or a woman, Sathyu and his team chose to portray Amrita as a lover who longed for love that remained unrequited throughout her life. Amrita was in love with Sahir (poet Sahir Ludhianvi) who, despite being in love with her, remained elusive.
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After being separated from her husband, Pritam (who she was engaged to at the age of three), she remained lonely for fifteen years with only her children for company.
Later, Imroz, an artist, soon became her confidant and loved and lived with her for the rest of her life. But Amrita continued to love Sahir till the end.
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Sathyu traces this complex maze of relationships and emotions with an interesting narrative technique. Right in the beginning of the play, the audience is introduced to the prime narrators — Amrita, played by Lovleen Thadani and ‘Waqt' (time) played by Mangat Ram. The character of ‘time' enters the narrative at crucial junctures to encourage Amrita to bare her heart out to him.
Sathyu uses this character to add depth to the play which would have otherwise remained a docu-drama. For example, when Amrita contemplates whether it is right to let Imroz, who was much younger than her, into her life, Waqt enters and helps her make the decision.
The bloody partition
Sathyu, not only documents Amrita's entire life in a matter of two hours but also manages to insert exceptional references that comment on the socio-political situation of the time that the play is set in.
Amrita Pritam also wrote at the time of Partition. Replete with Amrita's poems or ‘nazms' that offer glimpses of the bloody Partition, the script also unabashedly mocks censorship, power-hungry leaders and pointless wars.
Censorship
There is a small section in the beginning of the play where Amrita, disappointed after winning the Sahitya Akademi Award, talks of how she never wrote for the sake of appreciation. She goes on to say that she wrote for an audience of empty chairs because they would never want to censor writing.
Married to his style, Sathyu does the same as he did in his award winning film, Garam Hawa . He uses the medium as a tool for political commentary. It almost seems as if Amrita's love story could have been a love story between the two countries of India and Pakistan.
Set in a simple living room with cut-outs of Amrita's portraits hanging from the ceiling, the play worked because it was not just another memoir.