The Unapologetic Love Story of Amrita Pritam and Imroz

Amrita and Imroz both were writers and artists. They lived up to the standards of artists and writers by being unafraid of societal consequences. Their love breached every acceptable parameter of relationships in 1950s India yet their love thrived. This is the story of two people who were matched by destiny.

Amrita met Imroz at a time in her life when she wished they had met earlier, Source: Pinterest

A poet lives forever in the form of their immortal verse. But the people whom he writes about get imprinted in eternity. The muse is a person who embodies inspiration, the troupe of their creativity. That person is special, which inspires enough a writer to put the pen on paper. Then comes a few blessed and immensely exceptional couples who happen to be both writers. They spend their lives together, seeking inspiration from the warm presence of their muse of a partner.

A serene satisfaction swirls around them. Poets like these don’t have fear about the unexpected hiccup of a creative block. As love is the source of all inspiration and the ointment to every artistic malady. In India, there are very less couples who are writers, and if they are they are not popular as Amrita Pritam and Imroz. There is a reason behind the popularity of their love story, a book by Uma Trilok called Amrita and Imroz: A Love Story, came out in 2006, a collection of letters exchanged between the lovers during their forty years together as unmarried lovers.

As their love story falls under the arena of unconventionality, they didn’t meet any single of the expectations of the dogmatic society. Even though they lived in Bombay, a city where people celebrated love with affluent Bollywood romances, people still beguiled relationships that were not sanctified by marriage. In this sense, Amrita Pritam and Inderjeet Imroz were quite revolutionaries in creating a new thinking and lifestyle of couples, which is today known as the infamous living relationships.

Amrita Pritam was a famous name in the realm of Indian regional literature as she was an esteemed Punjabi poetess, writing since the age of 16. Though her career as a poet and vocationist thrived, her personal life wasn’t always gleeful and charming. She settled into a marriage of continuous in 1935, by marrying Pritam Singh, a merchant from her hometown Gujranwala. Then in her later life as an established poet, she fell in love with fellow poet Sahir Ludhianvi, but this love also turned fruitless for her as Ludhianvi loved another.

Pritam and Imroz at their Bombay flat, Source: Hindustan Times

Then, when she was around 40 and was living the life of a content single woman, she met Inderjeet Imroz, a man many years her junior but was openly and smitten by her. They met for the first time for a very formal business matter. Amrita had recently won the Sahitya Akademi Award for her poem ‘Sunhade’, and Imroz, a budding artist was called upon to design the cover for her poem. It was attraction, seeped through an artistic admiration, at first sight for Imroz. Amrita was too mortified in her dormant attention towards men to ever think of a man in a romantic way, who happened to be many years her junior.

Through work, they grew close and Amrita is known to have confessed that their love story would have been more content and abiding if Imroz had come much earlier in her life. Her sadness would never have persisted, making her feel like a spinster if only she had met Imroz earlier. But destiny had played its cards, and even though a little late, Amrita Pritam and Imroz were together. Their companionship was unapologetic and unincumbered, they knew that they must make the most of their time together and so, once familiar with their comfortability together, Imroz moved in with Amrita, creating a local controversy.

For forty, must peaceful and companionable years, Imroz and Amrita were together, until at the age of 86, Amrita Pritam died of old age, with her family and her lover Imroz by her side. Her very famous poem ‘Main Tenu Phir Milangi’', ‘I will meet you again’, is written in the gratitude of her lover Imroz, whose undemanding and all-consuming love allowed her to feel the luxury of being loved in its entirety. In an interview after the publication of the book, Imroz remembered Amrita in the present tense, as he expressed his desire to meet his lover soon, wherever she is.