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Love letters to each other by Amrita pritam and Painter/artist Imroz
128 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2012
4 people are currently reading
111 people want to read
About the author
Amrita Pritam
370 books468 followersAmrita Pritam (Punjabi: ਅਮ੍ਰਿਤਾ ਪ੍ਰੀਤਮ, امرتا پریتم ) was considered the first prominent woman Punjabi poet, novelist, and essayist. She was the leading 20th-century poet of the Punjabi language, who is equally loved on both the sides of the India-Pakistan border. With a career spanning over six decades, she produced over 100 books, of poetry, fiction, biographies, essays, a collection of Punjabi folk songs and an autobiography that were translated into several Indian and foreign languages.
She is most remembered for her poignant poem, Aj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu (Today I invoke Waris Shah - "Ode to Waris Shah"), an elegy to the 18th-century Punjabi poet in which she expressed her anguish over massacres during the partition of India in 1947. As a novelist, her most noted work was Pinjar (The Skeleton) (1950), in which she created her memorable character, Puro and depicted loss of humanity and ultimate surrender to existential fate. The novel was made into an award-winning eponymous film in 2003.
When British India was partitioned into the independent states of India and Pakistan in 1947, she migrated from Lahore to India, though she remained equally popular in Pakistan throughout her life, as compared to her contemporaries like Mohan Singh and Shiv Kumar Batalvi.
Known as the most important voice for the women in Punjabi literature, in 1956, she became the first woman to win the Sahitya Akademi Award for her magnum opus, a long poem, Sunehe (Messages). She received the Bhartiya Jnanpith, one of India's highest literary awards in 1982 for Kagaz Te Canvas (The Paper and the Canvas). The Padma Shri came her way in 1969 and finally, Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award in 2004, and in the same year she was honoured with India's highest literary award, given by the Sahitya Akademi (India's Academy of Letters), the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship given to the "immortals of literature" for lifetime achievement.
She is most remembered for her poignant poem, Aj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu (Today I invoke Waris Shah - "Ode to Waris Shah"), an elegy to the 18th-century Punjabi poet in which she expressed her anguish over massacres during the partition of India in 1947. As a novelist, her most noted work was Pinjar (The Skeleton) (1950), in which she created her memorable character, Puro and depicted loss of humanity and ultimate surrender to existential fate. The novel was made into an award-winning eponymous film in 2003.
When British India was partitioned into the independent states of India and Pakistan in 1947, she migrated from Lahore to India, though she remained equally popular in Pakistan throughout her life, as compared to her contemporaries like Mohan Singh and Shiv Kumar Batalvi.
Known as the most important voice for the women in Punjabi literature, in 1956, she became the first woman to win the Sahitya Akademi Award for her magnum opus, a long poem, Sunehe (Messages). She received the Bhartiya Jnanpith, one of India's highest literary awards in 1982 for Kagaz Te Canvas (The Paper and the Canvas). The Padma Shri came her way in 1969 and finally, Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award in 2004, and in the same year she was honoured with India's highest literary award, given by the Sahitya Akademi (India's Academy of Letters), the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship given to the "immortals of literature" for lifetime achievement.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 25, 2025
Beautiful, intimate, and filled with so much love and longing!
Though it feels slightly weird to read such intrapersonal thoughts by someone especially as a letter meant for someone else, some of the things surprisingly feel like something many people feel but just can’t find the right words to express it as beautifully as these letters. For someone who gets the ick at the most normal thing possible, this got me blushing at times.
Though it feels slightly weird to read such intrapersonal thoughts by someone especially as a letter meant for someone else, some of the things surprisingly feel like something many people feel but just can’t find the right words to express it as beautifully as these letters. For someone who gets the ick at the most normal thing possible, this got me blushing at times.
May 26, 2023
Amrita’s writing and expressions feels so personal… as if I have known her forever. Rated it 4 as I could resonate more with Amrita’s letters to Imroz but I am sure I will keep coming to this book ❤️
September 9, 2024
There are a lot of books, poetry, art created about the amazing feeling of being in love, and the extreme pain of heartbreak. But what about the pain caused while you're in love? It could be because you want to be with this person more than anything in the world, but circumstances forbid you to. It could be because you really love this person, but there's also some misunderstandings and miscommunication that are driving a wedge between you two. When you are deeply in love with someone, you also sign up for the pain that comes with it, even if the relationship might be as perfect as these two lovebirds here.
This is what's special about this book. It is mostly a compilation of letters Amrita and Imroz wrote to each other when Amrita was living in Delhi and Imroz was in Bombay - both for their respective careers. Given how globalized the world is at this point, pretty much every couple has to experience some form of long-distance at some point. And so did we. My girlfriend and I read this book when she was away for a month (might not sound like much but hey it was agony okayyy) - so of course the reading we picked out was two lovers who are also away from each other, expressing how they miss each other in as poetic of ways as possible. Yes, we love to torture ourselves.
Hell, this book is always going to be close to me because of another thing that happened, that I elaborated better in this video: https://youtu.be/6TwpjnER9Fg?si=hIhMS...
So yeah, you get it. The book is about two lovebirds having to live away from each other. It's also about the time they had some conflict in their relationship. And it's all poetic and beautiful to read and everything. The writing is beautiful, and not just by Amrita who was one of the most acclaimed writers of her time, but especially Imroz who was technically a painter but he seems to have just as much a way with words as her, if not more!
So any complaints? Yes. I do think the book could've done a better job of presenting and contextualizing the letters more. You will not believe this, but they list all the letters by Amrita first, and then list all the letters by Imroz after it. Soooo yeah, we had to literally put 2 bookmarks each on our copies, tell each other the page number, and keep turning back and forth trying to make sense of the letters in a chronological order. Also, while the book has a couple bits where it tries to fill in what happened between a time gap in letters, most of the time it mostly feels blank. Sometimes it feels as if the next letter refers to things that happened that we have no context for. And see, I know I'm not reading a novel here, I expect there to be some mystery, some lack of info, but when I see them talking all lovey-dovey with each other and then it snaps to their relationship not doing well with a little time jump in between, it feels a little incomplete. We did try to make up for as much as possible with some aggressive googling - but it doesn't change the fact that this book could've been presented in a much more lucid and easy-to-follow manner.
But again, that is more of a criticism of the way of presenting the book than the contents itself, which are some beautifully written letters between two lovers. Heck, some of it feels so well-written I'm surprised it was intended never to be shared with anyone beyond a single person. That has made me think about stuff I write privately more. While the onus of sharing with other people acts as a motivator, not doing that shouldn't be a reason to take it too easy. At the end of the day, art is about expressing what's inside, whether it's for the audience of one or one million.
3/5
This is what's special about this book. It is mostly a compilation of letters Amrita and Imroz wrote to each other when Amrita was living in Delhi and Imroz was in Bombay - both for their respective careers. Given how globalized the world is at this point, pretty much every couple has to experience some form of long-distance at some point. And so did we. My girlfriend and I read this book when she was away for a month (might not sound like much but hey it was agony okayyy) - so of course the reading we picked out was two lovers who are also away from each other, expressing how they miss each other in as poetic of ways as possible. Yes, we love to torture ourselves.
Hell, this book is always going to be close to me because of another thing that happened, that I elaborated better in this video: https://youtu.be/6TwpjnER9Fg?si=hIhMS...
So yeah, you get it. The book is about two lovebirds having to live away from each other. It's also about the time they had some conflict in their relationship. And it's all poetic and beautiful to read and everything. The writing is beautiful, and not just by Amrita who was one of the most acclaimed writers of her time, but especially Imroz who was technically a painter but he seems to have just as much a way with words as her, if not more!
So any complaints? Yes. I do think the book could've done a better job of presenting and contextualizing the letters more. You will not believe this, but they list all the letters by Amrita first, and then list all the letters by Imroz after it. Soooo yeah, we had to literally put 2 bookmarks each on our copies, tell each other the page number, and keep turning back and forth trying to make sense of the letters in a chronological order. Also, while the book has a couple bits where it tries to fill in what happened between a time gap in letters, most of the time it mostly feels blank. Sometimes it feels as if the next letter refers to things that happened that we have no context for. And see, I know I'm not reading a novel here, I expect there to be some mystery, some lack of info, but when I see them talking all lovey-dovey with each other and then it snaps to their relationship not doing well with a little time jump in between, it feels a little incomplete. We did try to make up for as much as possible with some aggressive googling - but it doesn't change the fact that this book could've been presented in a much more lucid and easy-to-follow manner.
But again, that is more of a criticism of the way of presenting the book than the contents itself, which are some beautifully written letters between two lovers. Heck, some of it feels so well-written I'm surprised it was intended never to be shared with anyone beyond a single person. That has made me think about stuff I write privately more. While the onus of sharing with other people acts as a motivator, not doing that shouldn't be a reason to take it too easy. At the end of the day, art is about expressing what's inside, whether it's for the audience of one or one million.
3/5
July 27, 2024
Spoiler Alert: What kind of love was it that touched my soul so deeply? The intensity of their love is vividly evident in the letters. Imroz didn’t just address Amrita as ashi; he also referred to her as meri qainat, meri lagan, sajda, zaalim, aye hazri lagwane waali, meri khoobsurat zindagi, mere intezaro ki tasveer, and more. How beautiful is that? How many of us express our feelings so profoundly? Reading this book was a complete 180-degree shift for me; I absolutely loved it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews