Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange

Text and Images by: Daljit Ami

Love legends in Punjab have not only been rendered in different art forms but also been invoked to negotiate the contemporary social issues. Painting, poetry, songs, films and folk songs are crucial to understand the importance of love legends in Punjabi society where love legends are an integral part of the folk idiom, and are embedded in the sub-conscious of every Punjabi.

If these narratives are so much part of the popular consciousness, how do we read the fact that the legends all forefront the woman protagonist? It is only in the legend of Mirza-SahibaN that the name of the man precedes. What are the possible interpretations in contemporary reality?

At a workshop conducted by Hri at the women-only BBK DAV College in Amritsar in early November, Mirza frequently figured in the discussion. Here, students shared their experiences about gender discrimination and dual standards of society when it came to the liberty to love or choose a companion of one’s own.

Painters and poets have interpreted love legends as metaphors, motifs and representations of the indomitable female spirit struggling against patriarchal social norms. Poets of all hues have used love legend in one or other context. They have been invoked to celebrate the spirit of Punjab; to express the suppressed desires of women; and even to aspire for social revolution. In cinema, the same love legends have also been interpreted in ways that assert violent masculinity entrenched in patriarchy.

While Mirza was being discussed, we screened clips from two films about this beleaguered lover. These films, “Mirza, An Untold Story” and “Hero Hitler in Love” are loosely based on the legend of doomed lovers. The first was adapted with the Punjabi diaspora in mind. In this film, Mirza is a Canadian policeman who chases the killers of his brother. These men also happen to be SahibaN’s drug smuggling brothers. The film reasserts violent masculinity with strong anti-women under tones. The second film has an interesting background. Initially, the producers had chosen the title “Mirza” but it was already registered. Subsequently, they changed their story a little and named it “Hero Hitler in Love”. The male protagonist, Hitler Singh follows his love Sahiba to Pakistan under the pseudonym, Mirza. In the end he asserts that he is not Mirza who will die in every love story but Hitler who kills all those in his path. Indirectly, the film criticizes Mirza for being pacifist and unashamedly asserts caste, ethnic and gender biases.

The participants were absorbed by the film clips and spontaneously commented on the patriarchal values and violence being asserted through these films. Some participants linked these stereotypes to their own experiences and social norms of contemporary society, which were anti-women: women are unreliable, less wise than males and they are objects of male desire and ownership. A student shared that they were under constant pressure to avoid male company. She narrated an incident when she was supposed to go for a study tour. Meanwhile, her distant cousin’s relationship with her boyfriend got exposed. Immediately, her parents withdrew the permission for study tour lest she develop a liaison with a boy. The control is not very different from the centuries-old control of Sohni.

Present-day Sohnis

From Mirza, the discussion veered towards strong women characters like Sohni. Participants started with constructing the outline of the story, with others filling in details. After the recreation, the participants were asked how how this simple story qualified to be a “legend”. Different interpretations emerged about why the story had endured through the ages: Sohni’s indomitable spirit and conviction about love. When asked which incident in Sohni’s life was the most significant, participants chose to focus on: Sohni and Mahiwal’s first fateful meeting; Sohni visiting Mahiwal when he was grazing buffaloes; Mahiwal visiting her disguised as a yogi; Sohni eating meat brought by Mahiwal from across the Chenab; drowning Sohni and Sohni clinging on to the legendary pitcher which dissolves in the raging water.

To set the stage for the discussion, emotive musical renditions of the legend by Barqat Sidhu and Sajida Begum were screened.  Talking about why the specific occasions were significant, the pitcher was found to be the most important symbol of Sohni’s life. An intense discussion followed, trying to interpret Sohni’s thoughts when she discovered that her pitcher had been replaced by an unbaked one. Students talked about her resolve, the appeal on the other side of the river and patriarchal pressure on her back.

Churning and expression

At this point paintings of different painters over a period of more than a hundred years who had worked on love legends in general and Sohni in particular were shared with the students. Immediately after this when asked about any recent incident involving young couple; within no time they were talking about an incident in Jalandhar a few months earlier where a girl committed suicide after journalists photographed her with her boyfriend. We discussed this incident in detail and students discussed this with anguish. Comparing the girl’s mindset with that of Sohni, the students came up with responses underlining the contemporary relevance of love legends. Some students were of the opinion that contemporary women were being presented through these love legends, as social norms are similar. One girl said, “Sohni had committed suicide…” The students used the blank canvases on the walls and charts to express their ideas of love and the clay pitchers that were installed for the workshop. The resultants were diverse expressions of art forms like illustrations, paintings and poems. Indeed, when love legends are adapted through different art expressions, women in today’s Punjab seem to be negotiating their personal and social spaces through these narratives.

Text and Images by Haroon Khalid 

A group of young janitors, smartly dressed in red uniforms, around the same age as the students at the university stopped for a little while to listen to our guest Safdar Mahi singing Waris Shah’s Heer. Imagine their surprise: a class being conducted on the lawns of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), and Heer being sung out loud, while the professor sat next to the singer. That’s not what one usually associates with college, especially for the working class, who is made to believe that the purpose of education is solely to learn English. I wanted to wave at them and invite them to come and sit with us, to listen to the songs and the discussions following. I thought they would be more familiar with these stories and their themes than the rest of us. But then I didn’t, reluctant to breach that class barrier raised after such painstaking efforts. They stood for a little while and then moved on, joking and patting each other on the back, perhaps talking about the strange sight that they had just witnessed.

Once settled into a song, there was no stopping Safdar Mahi. His volume increased as he hit the high notes characteristic of Punjabi folk songs. He seemed to be his in element. I wondered if anyone had ever sung Punjabi folk sitting on the lawns of LUMS. When I was a student there I had taken part in my share of singing Metallica and Bon Jovi. The only thing that came close to folk was the Sufi rock band Junoon. So common is the sight of young musicians singing and playing on these lawns that most passers-by ignore them. But Safdar Mahi was indeed a unique sight, which is why students stopped for a while to soak it in. His dark blue sweater covered his uniform. In his other life, he is a sub-inspector of customs, stationed at the Lahore International Airport and had come straight from duty on the invitation of his friend, Iqbal Qaiser. At heart Safdar Mahi is a singer who has been performing Punjabi folk songs for the past several years. Reading from his small note book he sang verses of Heer, Mirza-Sahiban, Sassi Punnon, and Sohni-Mahiwal for the class.

“Do you notice a strong sense of association with the geography of the region in all these folk songs,” said Professor Furrukh Khan, whose class, ‘Imagining Lahore’ was the one we were using to conduct our workshop on Hri’s Forbidden Love. Sitting cross-legged on the bench next to Safdar Mahi, he puffed on his cigarette as he engaged in this discussion. Furrukh Khanwas the first person to have made Punjabi culture and folk “cool” in my eyes. I still remember taking a course ‘Introduction to English Literature’ from him, while I was a student here and being struck that he was my first English teacher who spoke English in a Punjabi accent. Where appropriate he would insert phrases of Punjabi; almost revolutionary in formal education in English and how the language is understood in a post-colonial world. “Not only are these songs about love but there is also awareness about their surroundings,” he added. “Pay attention to how Mirza is talking about the tree or Sassi describes the burning sand of the desert. They were environmentalists before environmentalism became a catch-phrase.” “Is there a Jand tree around us right now?” I asked the students. Safdar Mahi had just completed a song in which there is a reference to this particular tree in association with the story of Mirza and Sahiban. “Does anyone know what a Jand tree looks like,” I asked them when we couldn’t find any around us. Nobody did – frankly, I don’t either.

The workshop which included about twenty students began by discussing relevance of folk love stories in our contemporary society. To emphasise the point I gave them a few examples from recent Hindi films. Since the class was focused on Lahore, Furrukh Khan wanted to do something with relevance to the city. This is where Iqbal Qaiser comes in. He has been researching the history of Lahore since more than a decade and has in the process compiled an encyclopedia which is yet to be published. He began by describing Lahore as a cultural city and the importance of a few particular localities in terms of performing arts. Soon he incorporated the topic of folk love legends and the different mediums that they have been performed in over the years. For this particular workshop, since we were focusing on performing arts, I wanted the students to actually see a performance. The plan was for Safdar Mahi to sing a song relevant to one of the folk love legends after which we would discuss the themes and symbolism alluded to in the song. However, once Safdar Mahi took the stage all plans receded to the background as he took us all through an incredible musical journey. The students who were earlier showing signs of distraction were amazed at his voice and pitch control. Even if the lyrics were not immediately absorbed, the inherent rhythm and melody in these songs was enough to capture everyone’s attention.

“Let’s arrange a proper concert for him,” suggested one of the students. “We could have paintings of folk love legends in the background and in between songs we could discuss the significance of these stories like we are doing right now,” elaborated another. “It’s your responsibility to do it then,” concluded Furrukh Khan.

As I packed my bag and prepared to end the session, one of the students asked if we thought that the stories were actually based on real incidents. This ignited a whole series of new discussions. “It doesn’t matter if they are real or not,” said Furrukh Khan. “The point is that they are embedded in our culture. Well I cannot talk about the others but I know that Mirza Sahiban is a real story. This story is said to have taken place in the second half of the 19th century, so during the British era. As a result of them eloping, a feud developed between the Jats and Sials, as Mirza was a Jat and Sahiban a Sial. After this incident in order to prevent any other “Sohni” from being born the Sials started practicing female infanticide which was eventually stopped by the British through legal actions by outlawing the practice. So at least for Mirza-Sahiban we have proof in the history,” explained Iqbal Qaiser. Differing from his interpretation of the feud between the clans, I added my own: “I think instead there was a historical feud between the Sials and the Jatts and in order to explain how that started, this story was created.” But I was in agreement with Furrukh Khan: given the place of these stories in popular culture and daily life in Punjab, it doesn’t really matter if they are actually based on a true incident or not. It is their relevance to the people folk and what they mean to them that is important.

The workshop ended on a high note, with the students thronging to the three of us to ask us questions, discussing various aspects from the workshop that they had failed to discuss earlier. I was glad that the students had gotten excited about the project. Purpose achieved!

Text and Images by: Haroon Khalid

 

Everyone present could name the four most famous folk love legends celebrated in Punjab: Heer-Ranjha, Sassi-Punno, Mirza-Sahiban and Sohni-Mahiwal, but none of them knew the story. It seems that the colonial policy of cutting off the educated from their roots through a policy of education is reporting success even in a post-colonial state. This was the situation at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), considered to be one of the best universities in the country. I was there to conduct a workshop on Hri’s project, ‘Forbidden Love’. My former professor, Sadaf Ahmad, an anthropologist, was kind enough to allow me to use her last class for the course, Gender and Power, to conduct the workshop. And here I was, sitting on the rostrum, in front of about forty undergraduate students. Being a pro-feminist course I was not surprised that the majority of the students were young women, with only three boys forming the minority group. A few years ago I was one of them: the odd boy who enrolled in the course and today I was conducting the class. But this moment of elation was soon followed by acute disappointment at the education system as a whole.

 

Re-instating Punjabi

At the beginning of the school years, a child learns to read Homer’s Iliad and abridged versions of Shakespeare’s plays. Students soon imbibe that the language being spoken around them, Punjabi, is the tongue of the servants and therefore not suitable for ‘to-be-enlightened’ souls like them. Knowledge, they are made to believe, can only be transmitted through English, which originated from a small island thousands of miles away. Like religious dogma which argues that society only started functioning after the introduction of the “true religion” and everything before that should be shunned as ignorance of the worst sort; so bad that it can only be defined by the Arabic word jahillay whose English rendition ‘ignorance’ simply doesn’t do justice to the ignominy that such ignorance carries.

The students of these English-medium schools, who later join English-medium universities like LUMS are also made to believe that all knowledge which is not transmitted in ‘holy’ English and knowledge that existed before the medium of instruction became English is also to be shunned. Searching those blank expressions I waited, patiently and desperately for any sign of hope, of recognition. “Has anyone ever seen a movie based on any one of these love legends?” I asked. The blinking eyes talked back, in voices that I could understand but did not want to believe.

“How many of you here have seen Rock Star?” A few hands were raised. Some others followed, lazily, wondering what the connection between Punjabi folk and Rock Star was. I quoted an article that my colleague and friend, Chintan Modi, had sent my way a few months ago, which carried an interview with Imitaz Ali, director of the film, in which he agreed that his script bore a remarkable resemblance to the story of Heer-Ranjha. I then followed up this example with a more recent movie, Jab tak hai jaan, and its song which uses Heer and Sahiban as symbols of rebellion and love. For the students the references worked, and recognition dawned. The folk stories reconfigured in their heads feeding of these two trendy examples and unconsciously from the repository of the knowledge transmitted by their ancestors, would have been familiar with these love legends. Using these two movies I rushed through the plots of Mirza-Sahiban and Heer-Ranjha.

Text by: Haroon Khalid
Image Courtesy: YRF

Heer Heer na akho odiyo, Main te Sahibaan hoye, 

Ghodi leke aaye le jaaye, Ghodi leke aaye le jaaye, 

Le jaaye Mirza koi, Le jaaye Mirza koi,

Don’t call me Heer, o friends, I’ve become Sahibaan

I hope he comes on a horse and take me away,

I wish some Mirza comes for me and takes me away

 

Ohde je hi main te oh mere warga, 

hansda ae sajra sawere varga, 

ankha bandh kar la te thande hanere varga  

I am like him, he is like me only..

He smiles like it’s morning,

and if he closes eyes, it’s like cold dark..

 

ohde je hi main te o Mirza mere varga

 

Naal naal tur na te vith rakhna

hadd rakh lena wich dil rakhna,

chhanve chhanve paawe assi teri parchhawe tur na

walk with me (close to me) only, don’t keep any distance in between,

mark a boundary, and keep the heart in between.

I have to walk under your shade only..

Source:

http://www.bollymeaning.com/2012/10/heer-lyrics-translation-meaning-jab-tak.html

In 1935, at a time when the Lahore film industry and Bombay industry were not separated by two separate nations of India and Pakistan and there was mobility between actors, musicians, themes, etc. between the two industries, a movie made in Lahore called Swarg ki Sidhi, revolutionalised film music. This was the first time that an music composer dared to depart from the standardised tradition of using classical music in movies and experimented with popular folk songs. The movie did exceptionally well primarily due to its music. And hence a new standard was adopted, in which folk became the most prominent theme. The audience couldn’t resist the charm of their own music (which is essentially what folk is) being played out to them. The practice prevails even today.

Bollywood’s latest mega-project starring Shahrukh Khan and Katrina Kaif, Jab Tak Jaan, also uses elements from folk music which first won the hearts of the people as far back as 1935. The song, Heer translated above once again taps on these icon. The use of the song also needs to seen in reference to the man behind the project; Yash Chopra. A Punjabi, Chopra belonged to that generation of film-makers, Indians and Pakistani, who were born prior to the birth of their countries. Their understandings of India-Pakistan and such folk stories goes beyond the narrow interpretation of nationalism and national culture that haunts most of the film-makers born after 1947. Through the use of this song Chopra travels to his roots in Lahore, which is neither Indian nor Pakistan.s of love and loss, Heer-Ranjha and Mirza-Sahiban, highlighting the resilience of the folk; despite opposition from cultural colonialism (during the British era), Partition, and Hindization of the Bollywood. Since the formation of the Indian cinema, Urdu has played a significant role in the movies, used frequently along with Hindi. However in the past years, this tradition has seen a decline primarily because of the nationalistic sentiment creeping into the industry and Urdu because of its association with the Muslims doesn’t fit that jingoistic parameter.

At first, the comparison between Heer and Sahiban seems rather odd. Heer was known for her feministic point of view, who challenged the patriarchy of the society through several actions. The song however makes her sound weak; not a preferred choice of character for someone who falls in love. Sahiban, on the other hand, extolled as the ideal beloved in this song, also has a failed love story (similar to Heer’s). She and her lover also die at the end of the story leaving her story far from perfect.

In the movie Katrina, the lead actress, sings this song to her father on his birthday. Her father is a successful businessman based in London, but belongs to Punjab. Overwhelmed by the use of Punjabi words by his English speaking daughter, he cries and embraces her. The father shares his Punjabi roots with Yash Chopra, the director of the film. During the course of learning this song, Katrina also realizes that she is not really in love with her fiancé but rather her music teacher, played by Shahrukh. Soon after the song, she leaves her fiancé for her true love. The song when first introduced in the movie has no relevance to the story of the film. But as the song plays it shapes the story of the movie. The song takes on a life of its own transforming Katrina and her love story. At the end of the song, it is clear to the viewer that Katrina would leave her fiancé for her Mirza.

Both Heer and Sahiban challenge very different social boundaries in their respective stories. For Heer, true love is sublime, even superior to the institution of marriage, which is why she chooses to elope with Ranjha when they reunite after a gap of sometime, even though she is married to someone else by then. Sahiban however doesn’t want to get married at all. Being forced to do so, she elopes with her lover before she is married. Katrina doesn’t want to go through what Heer did. She would rather run away while she can, like Sahiban did, which is why she says:
‘Don’t call me Heer, o friends, I’ve become Sahibaan, I hope he comes on a horse and take me away,
I wish some Mirza comes for me and takes me away’.

BY: HAROON KHALID

This is the story of two of my friends. Let us call them Salman and Ayesha. When the story starts, it finally seems as though Salman’s and Ayesha’s relationship is heading somewhere. They had been together for two years, but their future was uncertain. At 23, Ayesha’s family was eager to get her married, having completed her graduation, whereas Salman, also 23, was planning to leave for his Masters degree soon, with marriage not fitting into his plan. However now that it had dawned upon Salman that he would be moving away for two years, he realised how much he would miss Ayesha. He was finally getting serious about her, and was thinking about talking to her mother about their relationship.

Both the families knew each other well. They were neighbours in the highly secluded army housing in Islamabad. Salman’s father was a general when he was murdered by the Taliban. Ayesha’s father was a serving General. Ayesha’s mother was looking for suitable suitors in other army families. Ayesha had also decided that it was time that her mother was told about her relationship, so that she could help convince her father. Ayesha was making plans with Salman over the phone when her mother walked in and overheard the conversation. All hell broke loose. She told her husband. They both decided that Ayesha has to be married off as soon as possible. A son of a fellow general living in Australia and working in an accountancy firm seemed like a perfect fit. Ayesha had not even seen his picture. When she refused her mother threatened to commit suicide. Her father told her that he would kill her if she ever talked to or met Salman again. They took away her phone and barred her from leaving the house. She was ordered to quit her job in a couple of months: a job that she had recently taken up and loved. The next day Ayesha was taken to the house of the Australian boy and engaged to him in his absence. She would be marrying him in December and moving to Australia, the first time she would ever be leaving the country and living away from home. She still hasn’t seen his picture. The love story of Salman and Ayesha comes to an end.

The most amazing part of this true story is not the forced marriage. When you grow up in Pakistan such practices are somewhat of a norm. What is intriguing however is that why Ayesha couldn’t be married to Salman. He is also from an army background, lives in the same vicinity and his family enjoys the same social, economic and political status in the society that Ayesha’s does. I found the answer in a Pakistani movie called Mirza-Sahiban (1947) based on the Punjabi folk love legend of Mirza and Sahiban. The movie depicts both the lovers to be first cousins, Mirza being the nephew of Sahiban’s father. Growing up together they fall in love and want to marry. However the union is opposed by Sahiban’s brother and mother, even though the father is sympathetic. They want Sahiban to marry another cousin, who happens to be the nephew of Sahiban’s mother. The objection that they have is not with Mirza but at their audacity to fall in love with each other outside wedlock. Being from Muslim families these cousins would have been eligible to marry each other, but that could not have happened once the society found out about their love story. That of course makes the relationship illegitimate. This is where the question of honour comes in. Had Sahiban’s brother not found out about his sister’s love affair with Mirza, would he have still objected to their marriage? Love, it would seem, is forbidden when disclosed.

Applying this to the situation of my friends, Salman and Ayesha, I also wonder what the reaction of Ayesha’s parents would have been, had her mother never found out about the relationship between the two. Would the family had still reacted and refused to allow them to marry? I have my reasons to doubt. Ayesha’s mother would have reacted differently had Ayesha told her about Salman, instead of her mother finding out. She even would have agreed to marry them off and promised to help with convincing the father. It would have been an acceptable love had it remained a secret.

It is amazing how a love legend that was composed generations go still has resonance with the realities of the lovers in the Pakistan of today. The issues brought up in these stories still plague our society. Ill-defined concepts of honour and dignity are played out on the woman’s body, where a simple act of falling in love is seen as an act of trespass against the patriarch. Despite tall claims of “enlightenment” and “modernity”, we still uphold the same “traditional” “moral” standards that were used to oppress individuality centuries ago and are still used to do the same.

 

Chintan Girish Modi

As a boy born and brought up in Mumbai, I have had little acquaintance with the tale of Sohni-Mahiwal other than stray references to this couple in Bollywood films and Hindi television serials replete with love stories, often involving transgression of norms about whom one is allowed to love or/and get married to. I remember hearing Sohni-Mahiwal in the same breath as Heer-Ranjha and Romeo-Juliet. While I had no introduction to the stories of these lovers, I recognized that they were legendary and spectacular. Indeed, it appeared as though passionate lovers who dared to defy social norms seemed to be inspired by these precedents.

I had a closer encounter with Soh(i)ni and Mahiwal (also called Mehar) a year ago, as a researcher with the Kabir Project. Filmmaker Shabnam Virmani narrates the story during a festival of Sindhi Sufi poetry, ‘Seeking the Beloved’. The festival celebrated the verse of 17^th century Sufi Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai who weaves spiritual allegories around the tales of legendary lovers like Sohni-Mahiwal, Sassi-Punhoon, Umar-Marui, Leela-Chanesar and others.

Shabnam’s narration is inspired from Shah Adbul Latif: Seeking the Beloved, a book by Anju Makhija and Hari Dilgir, which features translations of Latif’s Sindhi verse into English for contemporary readers. The book was published by Katha in 2005. In this festival video we get to hear this narration, followed by a soul-stirring musical rendition of this story by Sumar Kadu Jat and Mitha Khan Jat from Kutch. This article by Namrata Kartik from the Kabir Project archives hosted on Open Space India’s Tana-Bana platform describes Shah Latif’s quest for the beloved.

As I watch the video again, the music and the narration inspire me to share the basic elements of the story before I proceed to share what meaning I make of it.

What I find amazingly progressive here is the fact that the agency in this love story is not with Mahiwal and Tulla alone. Sohni too is a strong, powerful figure. She knows what she wants. Her faith is unflinching. She cares little for the social mores that she is required to follow as bride, daughter and daughter-in-love. She is not bothered about “log-kya-kahenge”. She is drenched in her love for Mahiwal.

 

One of Anju Makhija and Hari Dilgir’s translations says (the numbers in brackets refer to Shah Latif’s Sindhi original Shah Jo Risalo):

those who got a glimpse

abandoned their homes

and husbands

even without matkas

in the whirlpool they swirled

(79/5)

 

Another one states:

beseeching god’s help

sohini journeys on a matka

ornaments sink

sharks

crocodiles encircle

whales threaten

to tear limbs apart

(81/15)

 

Yet another stanza states:

she jumps in

to choose safe waters

is the route of impostors

those who love

take on the mighty river

(86/4)

And yet another:

mehar

is

sohini

so is the river

an unfathomable mystery

(83/34)

 

These stanzas, coupled with the intensity of the Waee performance in the video, give me gooseflesh. There is something utterly mad and moving about this intensity. The waves lash at you. They slap you in the face. They take you along in the current. They embrace, envelop and elevate you. They seem to tell you that you are a fool caught up in pleasing the world, that you should just follow your bloody heart because there is nothing wiser than that.

In the video, Shabnam says, “The river has flowed for centuries between desire and fulfillment. What lies on this side of the banks of the river is the status quo, the establishment, the structures of containment, and the plunge is transgression. And I think Sohini’s failure perhaps lay in her return at dawn to keep up the pretence. And in a sense, in Sohini’s failure, lie all our failures as we struggle to move between this bank and the other, between had and anhad.”

Perhaps there is some truth in this. I am not sure if I want to see Sohini as a failure though. It is easy to think of her as some kind of tragic heroine punished for the fatal flaw of having courted the forbidden, dreamt outside of what is permissible. Why the gooseflesh then? Why don’t I feel repelled by her? Why do I find her incredibly attractive? I may not make the kind of audacious choices that Sohni and Mahiwal made but their story inspires me to stand up for what I believe in, despite the hurdles that might come my way. And this is not just about matters of love. It extends to the kind of work I want to do, the people I want to be friends with, the places I am comfortable in, the questions I allow my students to ask in the school where I teach.

By: Haroon Khalid

Junoon’s ‘Mahiwal’:

Oh my Mahiwal, my savior, get me through,
Awaken my sleeping fate;
I am not scared of this (approaching) death,
All I wonder is how to get through the Chenab,
You are my only friend,
You are my only love.

My life here is stuck in these waves,
But I long for you since eternity,
You are in my every breath,
You, my beloved;

My time to drown has arrived,
I prefer death over this existence.
You are here on this side
You will be there on the other side.
Get me through.

+ + +

Crossing the river Chenab, I notice its small waves beating up against the concrete bank. Every time I make this trip I sing my favorite song from the Pakistani rock band of the previous decade, Junoon. “Oh how do I cross Chenab, oh how do I cross Chenab. I would find you on this side, I would find you on that side,” I sing. For years I have done this, without knowing what the song meant. And then a few days ago, while I was watching the Pakistani folk movie Mirza Sahiban, about another love story from the Punjab, all of a sudden I understood the meaning of the line I had sung on so many occasions, in front of so many different people. This is Sohni stuck in the middle of the river, singing to her beloved Mahiwal, standing on the bank. She is asking him how to cross the river, just before she drowns. Mahiwal, who exists everywhere for her, will also be there for her in the next life, where she is about to go.

Mahiwal is featured in Junoon’s fourth album, Azadi, which is by far the band’s most popular album. In this album Junoon blends Sufi and folk poetry with Western music, accompanied by a traditional beat on a dholki. A guitar solo in the middle of the track creates a powerful rendition of raw rock energy, akin to something that Jimmy Page from Led Zepellin would play. This experimental music gave birth to a new music genre, known as Sufi rock. Junoon is the pioneer of this genre, which has become very popular with musicians of today in India and Pakistan.

The lyrics to “Mahiwal” are in Urdu interspersed with a few Punjabi words, a natural phenomenon as the story unfolds in the heart of Punjab. Sohni, after having realized that she is supported by a mud ghara which is now sinking, knows that she is about to die. She gives out a plea to her beloved, Mahiwal, who is on the bank. For her Mahiwal is not only her beloved, but her Peer, her savior, even her God. She refers to him as Jaspal, a word that is also used for the divine. So immersed is she in his love that for her, the entire world exists in him. Only he can get her through the river, only he can (through a miracle) change the course of her destiny, and ‘awaken a slumbering fate.’ She says that it is not death that frightens her in this moment of peril, but rather the pain of separation, the fact that she will not be able to hold her beloved, caused by an event that she regards as trivial, which is her death. The moment is not tragic because she is drowning but because she would miss the opportunity to meet her Mahiwal. This is a moment of frustration for Sohni, where she has sight of her goal, but will not be able to reach it. She feels a longing for Mahiwal, the kind of longing that someone feels after a separation of centuries. This longing exists even though Mahiwal is as close to her as her breath. This is the paradox that frustrates her.

Exhausted, Sohni resigns to her fate. So frustrated is she that she asks for death to take her away from this paradoxical situation: she cannot be with her beloved, with whom she has already become one. She knows that she will be united with her Mahiwal after death; such is her faith in her love for him. This love is so powerful she will find him everywhere she goes, may it be this side of the river or that; this life or the one after death. She needs to cross over. Not the river this time, but from this life to the next.

Ganga banaye devta,
Jamuna deviyaaN,
Aashiq magar bana sakey
Paani Chenab Da

[While the Ganga and Jamuna have produced gods and goddesses, lovers are born only from the waters of the Chenab.]

So said Prof Mohan Singh of Lahore, and later of Ludhiana. A contemporary of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Mohan Singh is also called the “poet of love”. Travelling through the lush green country side rejuvenated by the monsoon, one cannot help agreeing. The rivers of Punjab have had a deep and intimate impact on the psyche of the land and people. Passionate and emotional, this intense zest for life can, all too often, end in violent death. Be it Heer-Ranjha, Sohni-Mahiwal or Sassi-Punoon, thwarted lovers who would rather die than be parted from their beloved, Punjab has thrown up martyrs, from the fifth Guru Arjan Dev, tortured and executed by the Emperor Jahangir back in 1606, to Shaheed Bhagat Singh hanged by the British in 1931, aged just 23. (more…)