On the fateful night at two o’clock in the month of October; a phone call informed me that Sahir is no longer there, I remember a night that I had spent in Bulgaria just twenty days ago when Doctors informed me that the condition of my heart is critical. On that night I wrote a couplet. And then suddenly I looked at my hands; that these hands had floated themselves in the basket of desires. So how did the desire die out? Who had consumed them- desire or death?

The time had arrived when the first Asian Writers’ Conference was held in Delhi; poets and intellectuals were each given a delegate ‘badge’ with their names on it, and everybody had annexed the badge on their coat. Sahir had used the ‘badge’ which had my name on it, and the badge with his name was on my coat; so at that moment someone pointed out that we were using the “wrong” badge. Sahir smiled and said that those who gave us the badge must have been mistaken, and we should have changed the “badges” which we did not. Now years later when at two o’clock in night I heard about Sahir’s death, it seems to me that death pronounced its verdict after having read my badge that was on Sahir’s coat. The friendship that I had with Sahir was never hostage to words. It was a relationship between two profound silences. The shers (couplets) that I wrote for him won the Sahitya Academy Award. Press reporters started selling my photos. I felt at that moment that I was scribing something on the paper. When the photographer who was taking my photo left, I picked up the paper and then saw that there was only one word that was written- Sahir, Sahir, Sahir….

I felt nervous at this romantic act of mine, in the morning when the photo will appear and when people will read the name on the page- what sort of pandemonium will it create? But the doomsday did not descend. When the photo appeared in the newspaper the white page in my hand was blank. It was only known to me at that time that the page that was blank was not actually so. It was this kinship of poetry with blank paper that, thirty years ago when a new edition of Talkhiya (‘bitterness’) was being published Sahir asked me to write an introduction for it, but my feelings like me remained silent. Today, when Sahir is no more and a new edition of Talkhiya is being published the publisher want that I write an introduction for it. I would not write anything about the poems; Sahir’s poems are part of people’s soul and history’s essence. I was indebted to Sahir that day when he had asked me to write the introduction for his anthology. Then I could not but today I paying that due debt. It is alas too late now that he has left us.

I remember a mushairah (gathering of poets) when a group of people who were taking Sahir’s autograph left. I was alone and I smiled and gave Sahir my hands. He took them like a blank page and wrote his name on it. He said, “this signature is used my me in bank’s cheque, whatever amount you want feel free to put them on a cheque and take them”. My hands may be made of flesh but they had the fate of a blank paper which is I why I cannot bring myself to write any other word. Even today I do not have any word. This is a mere tale of a blank page.

Forty years ago Sahir would come to meet me at Lahore. He would come and silently smoke cigarettes. When the ash-tray would get filled he would leave and then I would light those leftover butts and smoke them. Mine and his cigarette’s smoke met only in the air. Our breath also met in the air and so did our poetry. I think wind can travel any distance, it could even before travel across cities without much hindrance. And it can also travel now from this world to that one.
Amrita Pritam