Sahir Ludhianvi, Amrita Pritam & Sudha Malhotra

LOVE LOST

The personal life of the writer of Hindi cinema’s most romantic lyrics, was fraught with unfinished liaisons

    The great Punjabi poet and writer Amrita Pritam once told Uma Trilok, who authored Amrita-Imroz: A Love Story, of the following conversation involving Sahir and her:
    Sahir happened to ask Amrita, ‘Why don’t the two of us go and live in China?’
    Amrita, puzzled by Sahir’s sudden suggestion of moving to China, sought an immediate explanation. ‘What will we do living in China?’
    ‘We shall write poetry,’ replied Sahir, rather vaguely.
    Amrita shot back, ‘We can write poetry here without going to China.’
    ‘Yes we can, but if we go to China we will never come back,’ said Sahir.
    It was, as Amrita told Uma, Sahir’s idea of proposing a lifetime together with her.
    He was that kind of man.
    One of the most intriguing aspects of Sahir’s life was his liaison with Amrita Pritam. Amrita met Sahir some time around 1944 in Preet Nagar, a village between Lahore and Amritsar. She was at this time married to Pritam Singh, who was an editor, but theirs was not the best of marriages. Husband and wife were known to be on totally different wavelengths from the very beginning.
    Amrita, in her mid-twenties at the time, had come to Preet Nagar to attend a mushaira which was being attended by Punjabi and Urdu poets. It was here that she saw and heard Sahir for the first time. She was immediately smitten by him. ‘I do not know whether it was the magic of his words or his silent gaze, but I was captivated by him,’ writes Amrita of the moment…
    Over the course of attending several such mushairas, the acquaintance between the two grew into a mutual affection. It was by all reckoning a most unusual relationship. The two hardly ever spoke to each other, preferring instead to let silence define their association. ‘There were two obstacles between us — one of silence, which remained forever. And the other was language. I wrote poetry in Punjabi, Sahir in Urdu.’…
    Even in her autobiography, Raseedi Tikkat (Revenue Stamp), Amrita writes of the eloquent silence that characterized their relationship:
    When Sahir would come to meet me in Lahore, it was as if an extension of my silence had occupied the adjacent chair and then gone away.
    He would quietly smoke his cigarettes, putting out each after having finished only half of it. He would then light a new cigarette. After he would leave, the room would be full of his unfinished cigarettes.
    I would keep these remaining cigarettes carefully in the cupboard after he left. I would only light them while sitting alone by myself. When I would hold one of these cigarettes between my fingers, I would feel as if I was touching his hands.
    This is how I took to smoking. Smoking gave me the feeling that he was close to me. He appeared, each time, like a genie in the smoke emanating from the cigarette…
    Given such devotion on her part, it is not surprising that when Amrita learnt of Sahir’s involvement with another woman in 1960, she was left extremely distressed.
    Sudha Malhotra was in her early twenties when rumours of an alleged affair between her and Sahir Ludhianvi began doing the rounds in film circles in the late 1950s. Sudha had recently entered the world of playback singing and had managed to carve a niche for herself in a short time with a few songs, most of them penned by Sahir, which became enormously popular.
    I met Sudha in the opulent surroundings of her bungalow in Khar (West), Mumbai, in early 2010. I must admit that I was apprehensive of asking someone of her age (now in her late seventies) details about a past relationship in the lead-up to the interview…
    He must have liked my voice… I don’t know what it was, but he was definitely very enamoured. He kept giving me good songs to sing, which was my achievement… Every morning I used to get a call from him, but it was always related to work.
    My uncle would tease me, ‘Tere morning alarm ka phone aa gaya hai’.. All I know was that attention was being showered on me and I was lapping it up. As a young girl, if somebody, such an important person, is giving you so much attention, you enjoy it, she said.
    In the same breath, she rebutted the thought of ever having entertained the idea of romancing Sahir: It didn’t even cross my mind once…
    The gossip, though, never went away. In fact, it increased to the extent that the line between fact and fiction got blurred. It was suggested that the song Chalo ik baar phir se ajnabi bann jaayein hum dono, sung by Mahendra Kapoor in Gumraah (1963), was a vicarious expression of anguish by Sahir for Sudha…
    After 1960, the year she got married, Sudha stopped singing in Hindi films. She did not sing for Sahir or anyone else. Neither did she meet him again…
    The opening lines of one of Sahir’s songs, sung once again by Sudha, probably summarize the relationship best:
Tum mujhe bhool bhi jao, toh yeh haq hai tumko Meri baat aur hai, maine toh mohabbat ki hai.
    Extracted with permission
    from Sahir Ludhianvi – The
    People’s Poet by Akshay Manwani, published by Harper
    Collins India (Rs 399)

It was suggested that the song Chalo ik baar phir se in Gumraah was a
vicarious expression of anguish by
Sahir for Sudha

Sahir with friend Yash Chopra, who was the one to invite him into the BR Films fold, and music director Ravi, with whom he came up with chart-toppers like Neele gagan ke taley

Sahir and Amrita Pritam’s relationship was defined largely by silence 

 

Courtsey : Mumbai Mirror