In a farmhouse near Gurgaon, a circle of boys talk heatedly about an independent nation. As excitement peaks, slogans no longer suffice and a song bursts through — Saathi haath badhana. The song from Naya Daur , with lyrics by Sahir Ludhianvi, tears through the evening calm. Watching from the side, the 71-year-old Pramila Le Hunte begins to clap. A one-time British politician — in 1983, she became the country’s first Asian woman to contest for Parliament on a Tory ticket — Le Hunte is now realising her dream of directing a play on her favourite lyricist, Ludhianvi.

Called Sahir: His Life and Loves, the musical recreates critical moments of Ludhianvi’s life through 30 songs. “From the time I first went to Cambridge as a young student, I laughed and cried with Sahir. When I was homesick, I’d listen to Jaane woh kaise log from Pyaasa. I promised myself that one day I’d do a play on him,” she says. She was active in the London cultural scene: the Richmond Arts Council roped her in to stage The Tempest, she made a film on Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat and worked with the government to create the national curriculum.

It was in Ludhianvi’s words that she found hope and solace when she plunged into politics in the heady 1980s Britain when her hero Margaret Thatcher was fighting the miners’ strike in what came to be known as the “winter of discontent”. He was there as she prepared for marches and rallies, and when she was chosen to contest from Birmingham Ladywood. “If Mrs Thatcher helped me mature as a politician, Sahir kept the fire alive,” she recalls.

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