AMRITA : THE EVER VIRGIN

When I moved into your bed
I was not alone — there were two of us
A married woman and a virgin
To sleep with you.
I had to for the virgin in me
I did so
This slaughter is permissible in law
Not the indignity of it
And I bore the onslaught of insult.

(These are the excerpt of a poem Kumari (Virgin) in Amrita Pritam’s Jnanpith Award-winning Kaghaz Te Canvas ).
Amrita pritam, the most known Indian writer had left her husband in 1960 for her lover Imroz, an artist and writer. For more than four decades, they were inseparable and supremely happy, and he designed most of her book jackets. He survives her, as do a daughter and a son from her marriage. During this time she had also love affairs with Punjabi Muslim poets - the well-known Sahir Ludhianvi and remained with Imroz and Sahir without any confrontation. A young Amrita Pritam, madly in love with Sahir, wrote his name hundreds of times on a sheet of paper while addressing a press conference. A bachelor to the end, Sahir fell in love with writer Amrita Pritam and singer Sudha Malhotra, relationships that never fructified in the conventional sense.
More about Amrita’s writing can be read on : http://www.lehigh.edu/~amsp/blog.html)