Google doodle on Amrita Pritam on her 100th birthday!


Devdiscourse News Desk | Delhi | Updated: 31-08-2019 09:48 IST | Created: 31-08-2019 00:52 IST
Google doodle on Amrita Pritam on her 100th birthday!
When Amrita Pritam was 16, she got married to Pritam Singh, an editor to whom she was engaged in early childhood. Image Credit: Google doodle
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Google today celebrates the 100th birthday of Amrita Pritam with a beautiful doodle to respect the great Indian novelist, essayist, and poet who wrote the majority of her writings in Punjabi and Hindi. In her entire career of 60 years, she produced over 100 books of essays, poetry, fiction, biographies including a collection of Punjabi folk songs which were later translated in many Indian and foreign languages.

Amrita Pritam was born as Amrit Kaur on August 31, 1919, in Gujranwala, Punjab, which today geographically lies in Pakistan. Her father Kartar Singh Hitari was a scholar of Braj Bhasha (a Western Hindi language) and also a poet. He was also a preacher of the Sikh faith. After she lost her mother at her age 11, she and her dad moved to current-day Pakistan’s Lahore where she lived till India’s partition in 1947.

When Amrita Pritam was 16, she got married to Pritam Singh, an editor to whom she was engaged in early childhood. Amrit Lehran (Immortal Waves) was her first anthology of poems that was published in 1936. Although she commenced her journey as a romantic poet, she gradually altered her track and became part of the Progressive Writers’ Movement. The effect of her alteration was reflected in her collection Lok Peed (People’s Anguish) which was published in 1944. Through her Lok Peed, she openly criticized the war-torn economy after the Bengal famine of 1943.

During India’s partition in 1947, Amrita Pritam left Lahore and moved to New Delhi. Once during her pregnancy in 1948, she was traveling from Dehradun to Delhi and expressed severe anguish on a piece of paper as the poem Ajj akhaan Waris Shah nu (I ask Waris Shah Today). This poem was to later immortalize her and become the most poignant reminder of the horrors of Partition

She was associated with All India Radio’s Punjabi service till 1961. She was observed becoming more feminist after her marital breakup with Pritam Singh in 1960. Majority of her poems and tales reflected the unhappy experience of her marital life. Many of her works have been translated into English, Danish, Japanese, French, Mandarin and other Indian languages like Punjabi and Urdu. She is equally loved in India and Pakistan.

Amrita Pritam was honored with many awards like Sahitya Akademi, Punjab Rattan Award, Bhartiya Jnanpith Award, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Shri to name a few. She also received International Vaptsarov Award from the Republic of Bulgaria (1979) and Degree of Officer dens, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Officier) by the French Government (1987). She died on Octo 31, 2005 at the age of 86 in India’s capital city after a long illness. Google today honors the great Indian poet and novelist with a mesmerizing doodle.

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