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The dancing skeletons
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" I have seen many such women. Whenever communal violence occurs, it is the women who have to bear the brunt of it, but why?"
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"Aj aakhan Waris Shah nu,
Tu kabra wichon bol...
Te aj kitabe ish da koi agla warkha phol...
Waris Shah nu kehan... "
(Today, I say to Waris Shah,
To rise and speak from your grave
Today I beseech him to open another page in the Book of Love
Once a daughter of Punjab wept and you wrote volumes
Today a hundred thousand daughters weep
O Waris Shah, rise and look at your Punjab... )
WOUNDED in mind and displaced physically from her homeland Lahore in the greatest communal division of greater India, an anguished Amrita Pritam penned these famous lines in her mother tongue Punjabi soon after the ordeal. Her extreme resentment against the distorted social assemblage where common people, primarily women, had to suffer horrors in the name of religion, transferred in poetic form towards one of the greatest Sufi saints of Punjab, Waris Shah, the grand old poet of Punjabi romantics.
Jabbed by unfulfilled love, the 17th Century poet rolled out volume after volume of verses commemorating the tears of his ladylove. And, Amrita in 1947, wondered how he would have reacted to the infinite tales of loss of honour and home of both Hindu and Muslim women of Punjab at the time of Partition, most of whom never returned to their families.
But, 56 years after she wrote those stanzas in protest, a frail, ailing and aged Amrita still complains: "We have not progressed. We are still there, trapped in that mindset."
Recalling those horrid memories of Partition yet again, a week after the release of Chandraprakash Dwivedi's film, "Pinjar" based on her second novel by the same name, she sounds defeated: "One thing that my writing has failed to do is change the human mind. What is it that turns a man into a beast, I failed to answer. I feel that where values end, obscenity begins."
She is "pleased that a talented man like Dwivedi" has done the screenplay for her novel. "I wrote the narrative in 1970. Most of the characters, especially that of a mad, pregnant woman, are real." The story chronicles through the tale of Puro, a victim of circumstances during the turbulent times of Partition of India, the shifting of relationships between nations, communities and individuals. She says, in some portrayals, she injected her own experiences of Partition and also bits and pieces of what she used to hear at a Government official's office at the Constitution Club in New Delhi those days.
"Our entire family fled. We were living in Gomti Bazaar area in Lahore. We suddenly became without a nation. Nothing we called ours was ours," recalls the Jnanpith awardee, her wrinkled face twitching a trifle. Dwivedi, she adds, took her permission to make the film but nothing beyond. In fact, the film, instead of spanning 13 years like the novel, stretches only between 1946 and 1948. Also, Dwivedi added a new character in the story, that of Puro's brother.
"I do not know about that. I have not seen the film yet. I long to see it, but I do not know when it will be possible," says a weather-beaten Amrita, lying on her bed at her Hauz Khas residence.
Referring to women victims of Partition, she says, " I have seen many such women. Whenever communal violence occurs, it is the women who have to bear the brunt of it, but why?"
During her eight years in Parliament as a nominated member in recognition of her immense contribution to Punjabi literature, Amrita says, she tried to raise this question in the House too. "I once asked former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who creates communal violence, and she said, only politicians. A common man is not interested in killing people. He wants to go home early after work to play with his children.... She had a point," recollects the Padma Shree recipient, her age-beaten face reflecting obvious pain.
So, what was she trying to say through "Pinjar?" "I tried to look at the victimisation of women, even if in the name of religion. At times, it becomes too horrific for me to relive those memories of '47," says the longtime editor of Nagmani magazine who counts many Pakistani columnists among her friends yet never returned to visit Pakistan.
But what about picturisation of violence that might ignite a sense of finger pointing at each rather than a liberation from it?
"Well, my aim was to echo what I saw and its significance, and not to judge who started it. But, how you look at it depends on individual mindsets," says the writer of "Rashidi Tikat" before expressing the wish "to rest a while," thus closing her tired eyes, the eyes which stood, witnessed to her words. One leaves her bedside hoping that the peace of her quiet room separates her from the present-day life infused with increasing retribution evident in even simple, day-to-day occurrences. For, she had seen enough!
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