Amrita Pritam: the Revenue Stamp and Harivanshraibachchan: in the Afternoon of Time • Chapter III

Chapter Three Amrita Pritam: The Revenue Stamp and HarivanshRaiBachchan: In the Afternoon of Time • Chapter III (i) AmritaPritam '.The Revenue Stamp (ii) Hariwansh Rai Bachchan: In the Afternoon of Time The present chapter discusses those two writers who have made a mark in the Hterature of their regional languages, and consequently in India and abroad. Amrita Pritam is the first woman writer in the Punjabi literature emerged as a revolutionary poet and novelist who illuminated the predicament of women caused by shackles of traditions and patriarchy. Harvansh Rai Bachchan is the important name in the movement of 'Nayi Kavita'. He created a new wave of poetry among the admirers by his book Madhushala. With the publication of this book, he became one of the most admired poets in Hindi literary world. Amrita Pritam was a prolific writer and a versatile genius. She published more than 100 books of poetry, fiction, biographies, essays, translations of foreign writers' works, such as Bulgarian poets Iran Vazovand Haristobotev, a Hungarian poet Attila Josef etc., as well as a collection of Punjabi folk songs and autobiographies. Apart from The Revenue Stamp, she wrote one more autobiography Aksharon Ke Sayen (Shadows of Words) published in 1999.She was a rebel who lived her life in her own way with utmost intensity. This intensity, this passion is the soul of her writing. Before we plunge into a detailed discussion of her autobiography vis-a-vis her writings, it is useful to understand how she grew as an individual, what forces shaped her character and her mind, which people she learned from and grew as a writer. Bom on August 31, 1919 as Amrit Kaur, at Gujranwala, Punjab (now in Pakistan), Amrita was the only offspring of Kartar Singh Hitkari and Raj Bibi. She started to write poetry at the age of 12. Her first collection of poems Amrit Laharen was published in 1936 and the same year she was 89 married to Pritam Singh, the son of a hosiery merchant in Lahore, whom she had been betrothed at the age of four. Then her name changed from Amrita Kaur to Amrita Pritam. Once she started writing in 1936, she prolifically continued composing several poems and had published six collections of poems by 1943. Initially Amrita used to write romantic poems though she gradually came under the influence of the Progressive Writers' Movement, and became a member of it. The Progressive Writers' Movement in India was a response to a warning given by great western writers in a meet held in Paris (1935) against fascism and an appeal to the writers of the world for the welfare of common people. They advocated equality and attacked social injustice and backwardness. The great Hindi writer Munshi Premchand was the chairman of it. Poets and writers such as Sadat Hassan Manto, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Bhisham Sahani, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Sahir Ludhiyanvi, Majnun and Firaq Gorakhpuri etc. were members of the movement. In 1944, her collection of poems Lok /'ee(i(People's Anguish) was published in which she criticized the war-torn economy in the aftermath of the Bengal famine of 1943. She developed into a bold writer who expressed herself freely without any fear of the consequences. She also edited Nagmani, a poetry monthly. She met Sahir Ludhiyanvi a famous Urdu and Hindi poet who wrote many immortal songs for Hindi films. She fell madly in love with him. She has written about this 'untold' love in her autobiography frankly. She lived in Lahore even after her marriage. However, she had to leave Lahore and go to Delhi as a refugee due to the Partition. When she was at Lahore she worked at Lahore Radio station. In Delhi also she worked in the Punjabi Broadcasting division of All India Radio, till 1961. Meanwhile she had started to write stories and novels also. In 1960, she left her husband. After separation her writing became more feminist. She always wrote about the plight of women in their multiple social and domestic roles, highlighting their struggle to find their identity. Her writing after 1960 deals more and more with women, who acknowledge 90 their desires, assert their independence and accept responsibilities for their lives even at the cost of love. With seniority came maturity and with maturity followed Awards and honours of various types, at state, national and even international levels. Amrita Pritam is the first woman achiever of the Sahitya Akademy Award in 1956, as well as the first recipient of Punjab Ratna Award. She received the Padma Shree in 1969, and Padma Vibhushan in 2001. She also received honorary D.Litt. degrees from many universities including Delhi University (1973) and Vishwa Bharati (1987). She received the International Vapstrov Award from the Republic of Bulgaria in 1980. She was honoured with India's highest literary award-Bharatiya Janpeeth Award in 1982. She worked as a Member of Rajya Sabha, from 1986 to 1992. She was involved in social work to certain extent. She was instrumental to begin the first Janta Library in Delhi. This study center-cum-library is still functional at Clock Tower, Delhi. In Delhi she met Imroz (nee Inderjeet), the famous painter of the day, when she was 41 years old. She developed a long term relationship with this famous artist with whom she lived for the rest of her life. Their life together has become a subject of a book Amrita Imroz: A Love Story by Uma Trilok. She died in sleep on 31 October, 2005 at the age of 86 in New Delhi, after a long illness. In her career as a writer spanning over six decades, she penned eighteen collections of poetry, twenty eight novels, eighteen anthologies of prose, five collections of short stories and sixteen miscellaneous prose volumes. Poetry anthologies: Amrit Lehran (Immortal Waves)-1936, Jiunda Jiwan (The Exuberant Life)- 1939, Trel Dhote Phul-1942, O Gitan Valia-\9A2, Badlam De Laali-\943, Sanjh de Laali-\943, Lok Pee^-(The People's Anguish)-1944, Pathar Geetey (The Pebbles)-1946, 91 Punjab Di Aawaaz -1952, Sunehare (Messages)- 1955, Ashoka Cheti- 1957, Kasturi-\951, ChakNambar Chatti -1964, Kagaz Te Kanvas-\9^\. Novels: Doctor Dev-1949, Pmjar-\950, Kore Kagaz-\9S2, Unchas Dm-1979, Ek Si Anita- 1964 Dharti, Sagar aur Seepian-1965, Rang ka Patta\963, Dilliki Galiyan\96%, Terahwan Suraj-\979, Yaatri\91\,Jala Vatan\970, HardattKa Zindaginama-\9S3. Autobiographies: Rasidi Ticket (The Revenue Stamp){\916), Aksharon ke Saayen (Shadows of Words) (2004) Collections of ShortStories: Kahaniyanjo Kahaniyan Nahi, Kahaniyon ke Angan mein. Stench of Kerosene Literary journal: Nagmani, a poetry monthly. In a patriarchal social setup it even today takes great courage for a woman to write an autobiography. Narrating the predicament of a woman writer Shobha De says: 'For a woman, a book in progress is like a secret lover she has to hide from her family and so people are terrified at the thought of writing about themselves. They find all kinds of excuses. They lie. They make up. They invent. They rub out.'(De, 1998:1-2). Amrita Pritam wrote Rasidi Ticket in Punjabi in 1976. It was translated in many Indian and foreign languages immediately. The present study uses the English rendering done by Krishna Gorowara in 1977 entitled The Revenue Stamp. Amrita Pritam adopts a linear mode of writing and keeps to the chronology of events more or less. Her story is laid out in a series of episodes that open the door of some of the exciting and shaping events in her life. A writer's life is what his/her creative writings show directly or otherwise. It was, therefore, a challenge for her to identify those areas of experience in her life that she had not dealt with for certain obvious reasons. It is a perennial 92 challenge for a writer of autobiography what to say and what to leave unsaid, for total truth may not be said at all. Writers often choose to be selective and come out with some kind of justification. In such a case the writing becomes subjective and lopsided. However, Amrita was made of a sterner stuff and chose the dare all, bare all approach. In an interview she says, "By the time I came to write The Revenue Stamp everything was already paired by me in fiction and poetry. I thought I should not report the same. Instead, I incorporated the things I wanted to write and could not." (Varma, 2000:124-125) In the prologue to, The Revenue Stamp, Amrita Pritam declares that the complete texture of her book is threaded by her personal feeling. She reveals her feminine agony openly in this book and agrees that her other books too depict the same agonized experiences and feelings but with a mask. It is discussed in the present chapter to observe the growth of Amrita Pritam as a poet and a writer. However, only in autobiography the writer can narrate in confessional mode. Although Amrita Pritam's autobiography does not read like a cohesive story, one can get an idea of what her life was like. Amrita has woven a huge mass of personal experiences into the texture of her writings. It is necessary, therefore, to analyze those experiences of her life which have direct bearing on her writings. Her experience of growing up as a lonely child accounts for acute emotional vacuum in her writings. She was neither happy nor satisfied in her married life, the evidences of which very often get in her autobiography and numerous other writings. Amrita Pritam has divided her autobiography in six chapters. In the first chapter 'Resurrecting Time' she speedily winds up forty one years of her life highlighting certain events of her personal life as well as the socio-political situation.

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