A love story ends on a note of despair, sometimes loss, death or tragedy at other times, but seldom does it end with our favourite cliche, 'happily-ever-after.' While Romeo and Juliet's love does not live for long beyond the balcony, Antony and Cleopatra's kiss of love is poisoned by Octavius Caesar, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler's passion is one inch short to permanence, Laila and Majnu are forced to part ways and Salim and Anarkali's blossoming romance was doomed from the beginning. Amrita Nigam and Zulfikar Haidar is yet another pair whose love was perhaps meant to be unrequited but also, eternal and exemplary at the same time. 35 years of life lived together through letters, letters that brought them close, letters that moved them away from each other and letters that securely enveloped a romance unknown to the ignorant world.
'Teri Amrita', a Punjabi play (translated by Amrik Gill and directed by veteran actor and thespian Om Puri), originally written by Javed Siddiqui titled 'Tumhari Amrita' is an adaptation of American playwright A R Gurney's 'Love Letters' (1988). Recently staged at the Shri Ram Centre for Arts and Culture (SRCAC) in Delhi over four consecutive days, the play 'Teri Amrita' ran to packed houses in the evenings of this chilly December month.
An unfinished letter, an incomplete love storyThere are two chairs, two tables and heaps of letters upon which written, are words, waiting to be read, heard, lived and loved. Draped in a red and black saree, actress Divya Dutta breathed life into the character of Amrita Nigam, an artist whose paintings were an expression of her passionate self; and a free-spirited woman often misunderstood and condemned by society for her 'antics'. Om Puri, on the other, looked radiant in a white cotton chikankari kurta-pyjama and well-suited the persona of Zulfikar Haidar, a student of Civil Services until he stumbles upon law as his true calling and eventually ends up a bureaucrat and an important political figure during the pre-independence years.
The year is 1940 and it is Amrita's eighth birthday party, also, a beginning of a friendship that is to last seasons, birthdays and festivals spanning 35 years. Writing letters to each other becomes so intrinsic to the lives of Amrita and Zulfi that when they find nothing new to say to each other, the letter just reads, 'Happy New Year' or a 'Happy Birthday'. On days when Amrita is unhappy or upset to learn that Zulfi would miss her yet another art exhibition due to political engagements, she would either resolve not to send anymore letters or pen abuses to her lover. A little cajoling from Zulfi in his next letter would be enough to get her back to writing to him.
'Will you marry me Zulfi?'To believe that only marriage can consummate love would be an affront to a relationship that is beyond societal dictates. When Amrita writes, 'Mujhse Shaadi Karoge Zulfi' (Will you marry me Zulfi), Zulfi is left thinking about how he should articulate his reply. "To write your name, Amrita on this white sheet of paper is like giving direction to a lover lost on an empty road," writes Zulfi trying to tell Amrita that they were married from the day they exchanged their first letter. But he gets married, not to Amrita but another woman after he gives into his parents' wishes. Whether it was the difficult proposition of a Hindu-Muslim marriage during the partition years that prevented the union of Amrita and Zulfi one doesn't know, but one surely could not question the purity and intensity of a bond destined to be etched in the memory of successive generations.
'I cannot marry you Zulfi'
But there were uncomfortable questions when one fateful day a journalist caught hold of Amrita's letter addressed to Zulfi. The possession of Amrita's letter became a weapon to malign the political image of Zulfi and also ridicule the status of a woman (Amrita) who had lost her family to fatal health conditions and resorted to alcohol and her canvas for company. Amrita had toured almost the entire world with her paintings exhibited in New York, Rome and elsewhere. However, she began to lose her vision and failed to distinguish red from black, "Instead of red, I painted a black sunset Zulfi," she wrote. Given the circumstances, Zulfi proposes marriage to Amrita to save both her and him from filthy conspiracies, but Amrita refuses. "Your wife and little child had come to visit me. You cannot do something against your family. I cannot marry you," she signs off.
The last letter
Amrita dies. Zulfi writes a letter to the journalist urging him to publish not one but all the letters exchanged between him and Amrita over 35 years so that the love of his life is not (mis)judged for a single letter but understood fully as a person that she truly was.
There's humour, sorrow, pain and pathos in this play, a play where two actors have nothing but their voices and dialogues to weave a story.
With actors like Om Puri and Divya Dutta on stage, every dialogue immediately became an image in the mind; such was the power of their theatrical genius.
On clinical terms Amrita may have died due to an alcohol overdose but in reality she died because she began to find death dearer than life.
She was not just Amrita; she was Zulfi's Amrita, 'Teri Amrita'.
History of 'Teri Amrita'Shabana Azmi and Farooq Sheikh have been performing 'Tumhari Amrita' for almost two decades now. When director Feroz Abbas Khan first staged 'Tumhari Amrita' in 1992 at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, as a tribute to Jennifer Kapoor on her birthday, little could he foresee that the play would be celebrated for over than 20 years. Om Puri and Divya Dutta first performed the play at Rose Theatre, Ontario, Canada, where the former made a comeback to theatre after 25 years while it was the latter's debut performance as a theatre artist.
ipshita.mitra@indiatimes.co.in
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