THE LANGUAGE OF THE HEART

 



“The burning embers within me burst into flames,

My body becomes a fire-lit torch.

Ho someone! Send for the mid-wife.”

Amrita Pritam

 

I don’t remember liking prose or poetry while I was in school. It was in my junior college, that  I started liking both. Amazing teachers had sparked this liking in my heart. It continued in my first-year degree, too. English or Kannada – it made no difference… Amazing teachers did.

Later, as I started expressing my deepest feelings – love, joy, fear, worries all – in my private notes, I freely allowed myself to do it. Oblivious of the so-called ‘rules’ of prose or poetry, which the school syllabus stressed upon, now, I was blissfully and freely expressing whatever and however I wished to…

When some of my close friends exclaimed - “It’s a beautiful piece of prose/poem”, I wondered - “Is it?”

I still wonder! 

For, I have no clue about the 'rules' of prose or poetry… School and college are long over, and there are no exams, you see. But, living and learning are still on… The scribbling is still on. So, if my friends think, that what I write are prose or poetry, so be it…

Last night, my dear friend and a fellow-trainer, Dr. Deepak, shared this lovely piece of ‘scribbling’ by Amrita Pritam:

 

                           THE WILL OF AMRITA PRITAM




Fully conscious and in good health I am writing today my Will:

 

After my death

Ransack my room

Search each item

That is 

Scattered

Unlocked everywhere in my house.

 

Donate my dreams

To all those women

Who between the confines of

The kitchen and the bedroom

Have lost their world

Have forgotten years ago

What it is to dream.

 

Scatter my laughter

Among the inmates of old-age homes

Whose children

Are lost

To the glittering cities of America.

 

There are some colours

Lying on my table

With them dye the saree of the girl

Whose border is edged

With the blood of her man

Who wrapped in the tricolour

Was laid to rest last evening.

 

Give my tears

To all the poets

Every drop

Will birth a poem

I promise.

 

My honour and my reputation

Are for the woman

Who prostitutes her body

So her daughter can get an education.

 

Make sure you catch the youth

Of the country, everyone

And inject them

With my indignation

They will need it

Come the revolution.

 

My ecstasy

Belongs to

That Sufi

Who

Abandoning everything

Has set off in search of God.

 

Finally

What is left

My envy

My greed

My anger

My lies

My selfishness

These

Simply

Cremate with me…

 

Amrita


 

Amrita Pritam’s writings – both prose and poetry – are soul-stirring. I deeply connect to each piece of her writings whenever I come across them. She wrote in Punjabi and Hindi… But, to connect deeply, do we need these languages?

I firmly believe, that the language of the heart can never be taught or learnt in schools and colleges. It is done in the furnace of Life… through the quietly-burning embers within…

Listen to these…






GERALD D’CUNHA

 

Pic.  Pixels/pixabay/Evie Shaffer

Video: 1. Guzar/HighFive 2. Manmeet Narang

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