Ajeet Cour was born in 1934 in Lahore. Her father, Sardar Makhan Singh, was a well-known doctor. Those days, a girl with a fair complexion, thin lips and long hair, was being treated for her tuberculosis by Cour’s father. “The girl was Amrit Kaur, who later became famous by the name ‘Amrita Pritam’,” the author writes in her book, The Blue Potter (Aleph), translated from Punjabi to English by Sushmindar Jeet Kaur.
Amrita’s husband, Pritam Singh, always accompanied her on those visits. Cour briefly took Gurumukhi lessons from Amrita’s father, Gyani Kartar Singh Hitkari—he had moved to Lahore from Gujranwala, since he “didn’t feel at home” without his beloved daughter, Amrita.
As a child, Cour adored Amrita. “She [Amrita] was so beautiful that I used to peep through the cracks of the door and always pray for her well-being,” she says in her book. Speaking to TMS, however, she recalls how that early admiration slowly turned into disillusionment. Of the 17 personalities featured in her book, she says that writing about Amrita was the most difficult “because she was quite complex.”
‘Amrita Pritam was complex’
“I adored her, worshiped her as my idol when I was a child, for her beauty, her brilliance and her boldness. Later, when she fell in love with Inderjeet, the artist who later changed his name to Imroz, she treated her husband like a doormat, taking full financial advantage of him,” says Cour.
Cour also speaks about Amrita’s political choices. “During the Emergency of 1975, in order to please Mrs. G [former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi], she collected Punjabi writers' signatures on a statement favouring Emergency.”
Cour refused to sign the statement. She adds that Amrita Pritam was “also strangely silent” on Operation Blue Star and the Sikh genocide of 1984.
Much like her candid portrayal of Amrita, the book narrates 16 other personal encounters of Cour, with stalwarts from Punjab’s arts and literary circles — She recounts organising a ghazal programme for composer and singer Jagjit Singh at Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium — that helped propel him towards stardom. She writes — of Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s heartbreaking separation from his lover Anu, and of how that loss added to the aching beauty of his lyrics, full of agony and longing; and of inviting Khushwant Singh over only on quieter, less-crowded evenings, knowing that he did not enjoy spending his time surrounded by a crowd of people.
In the chapter titled ‘Daughter of the Chenab’, the author notes that Hindi fiction writer Krishna Sobti was the first to introduce Punjabi regionalism into Hindi literature. “Punjabi idioms and words were kneaded into her language like butter into flour,” Cour writes. Yet, to her surprise, Sobti herself never spoke Punjabi.
A memoir of others
Ajeet Cour turned 91 this year. She has written 31 collections of short stories, novelettes and novels, translated nine works of fiction and poetry, edited more than 35 books, and published numerous articles as an accredited journalist.
She has received numerous national and international honours, including the Sahitya Akademi Award (1986), the Padma Shri (2006) and the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship (2024). She is also among the ‘1000 PeaceWomen Across the Globe’ who were collectively nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.
When asked about the inspiration behind her recent book, The Blue Potter, Cour says old friends simply resurfaced in her thoughts. “All of my closest friends, many of them gone, knocked at the door of my heart and inspired me to write about them,” she remarks. “I did not select them. They were always around me, sharing my life… even after they were gone.”
On art and faith
When asked if there was anyone she wishes she could have included in the book, Cour says she would have liked to write about the former Indian Prime Minister. V.P. Singh, who was also an artist and a photographer. “But this book being concentrated on Punjabis, this sketch would have been out of place,” she says. She adds that she also left out notable figures such as novelist Nanak Singh, writer Mohinder Singh Sarna and Bhagat Puran Singh, often called as the 'Mother Teresa of Punjab' — not because she didn’t admire them, but because she did not know their personal lives as closely as those she chose to write about.
On the evolution of Punjabi arts, Cour notes that while music has gone global, its real essence, for her, still lies in Keertan. “For me, the soul of Punjabi music is Keertan, which I sang in Gurudwaras and listened to every day. It intoxicates me,” she remarks.
However, when it comes to literature, she is less optimistic. With readers turning to their phones and libraries no longer receiving bulk purchases from the government as they once did, she worries that fewer people are engaging with books.
Her book took around “4 to 5 years to complete.” It was first published in Gurmukhi, which has a relatively small readership, she notes. After coming out in Hindi, Bengali and English, it is now set to be released in Malayalam as well. The book is a repository of stories that would have otherwise gone unrecorded.