The well-known Punjabi poet Surjit Pattar passed away in Ludhiana on May 11 at the age of 79. He was a recipient of Padma Shri award, and his poems have been collected and published in several volumes. He retired as a professor of Punjabi from the Punjab Agricultural University. He was also the President of the Punjab Arts Council.
For me and many of my friends who were a part of the Naxalite movement in the 1970s, a particular poem of Surjit’s struck a chord in our hearts. When after the lifting of the Emergency, we were released from jail at the end of the 1970s, we returned to our old homes, seeking to get our bearings, unable to forget the past and our comrades who became martyrs, and yet trying to overcome the sense of disillusionment while attempting to adjust to the present. Surjit captured our dilemma in a poem entitled Ghar Lotna Mushkil Hae Aaj with these moving lines –
“To go back home now is difficult/ Who will recognize me ?
Death has put its mark on my forehead
Friends have left their footprints on the face.
Another face stares at me from the mirror
My eyes sparkle with a dead glow
Like the light from the broken roof of a house.
When an old friend meets me
A thousand memories rush –
Memories of the forgotten love for the dead gods……
When the hymn floats from the Gurudwara
I remember him who is no more…
If anyone looks for him/ I feel frightened
For, now in my heart I’m more alone…”
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
