Abstract
To read Bulleh Shah as a Sufi, an Udhrite poet and as a meeting ground of cross cultural contexts is the main focus of this paper. The paper also strives to examine, analyze and experience the poetry of Baba Bulleh Shah in both its original Punjabi and English translation.
Bulleh Shah lived in a chaotic, highly politicized Punjab rent by bloody violence over issues of religion, fanatic oppression and power. On one side of the scale was the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and on the other the Sikh guru Guru Gobind Singh. Among his Sufi contemporaries were poets like Sachal Sarmast and Waris Shah. What was Baba Bulleh’s stance and how does it come through in his verse? How far does his poetry interact with the social, cultural, and moral fabric of its times? This would also include Bulleh’s critique of orthodox religion, frequent references to prevailing social and familial structures, images from daily life and romantic analogies from the folk legends of Heer-Ranjha, Sohni-Mahiwal, Laila-Majnu and Sassi-Punnoo.
Bulleh Shah adopts the stance of an Ashiq (the besotted lover-moth) towards God the beloved Mashooq and this brings his work in the realm of Udhrite love poetry that prevailed in the Kissa-Kav traditions of medieval Punjab, Sindh and Afghanistan. This paper examines Bullah’s verse and its approach to divinity in the Udhrite and Sufi context. In this paper you will also find English translations of eight Kafis from Bulleh Shah’s poetic repertoire. Some of them have been incorporated within the paper while the rest are placed at the end.
Thus the paper attempts to read and locate Bulleh Shah - the prince like sufi poet in the text and context of Sufi Punjab and its literary culture. Through the translations incorporated here, the paper has tried to engage with and bring into English, the subtler aspects of Bullah’s work – aspects which manifest in the element of divine posturing and the assonance of romance through the musicality and raw urgency of a voice that is intimate, besotted, and free.
Keywords: Sufi-Sufism, Kissa-Kav, Divine Romance, Udhrite Verse.
Myself lost, what next?
Lost in lands of love
I search for a Self
that is headless,
handless,
feetless.
They nabbed me and dragged me (from home),
how must I stay serene?
Stripped of dignity,
shorn of selfhood,
at last I found
contentment complete.
Sahukar of both worlds
Bullah perceives, All in One.
Himself lost
he seeks his Self
in love land.
(23, Kafi 7, ‘Ab Hum Gum Huay’)
(English translations of all the kafis in this essay are mine)
A heightened sense of emotion, an inebriated state of surrender and a sense of being adrift in the melee of life, envelops Baba Bulleh Shah’s work that speaks to us even today as a charmed compelling voice from the dust of times when life was raw and rough in Sufi Punjab of early eighteenth century. In all of his work, Bulleh Shah adopts the besotted voice of an Ashiq –pining for God the Mashooq, this locates his work in the realm of the Kissa-Kav[1] traditions of medieval Sindh-Punjab and Afghanistan which also borrows from the Arabian tradition of Udhrite[2] love poetry that serenades the subject of pining lost love(rs). Even today, scores of musicians – professional and amateur, continue to compose and recompose his songs in all kinds of modern and traditional Sufi fusion moulds and sing them to the Sufi heart of listeners across India/Pakistan and across the world.
It is said, Baba Bulleh Shah (1680-1758) authored over a hundred compositions and the form in which he wrote is called the Kafi. The kafi is an established style of Punjabi poetry and was used by Punjabi Sufis and the Sikh Gurus from Guru Nanak to Guru Gobind Singh. Like the Bhakti saints, the Sufi poets who were their spiritual contemporaries also wrote in the language of the common people. Baba Bulleh Shah who lived in Kasur in (west) Punjab wrote in Punjabi, the language of the people of the land. It is interesting to note that around the same time as Baba Bulleh Shah of the Qadiri silsila there lived another Sufi contemporary, Waris Shah (1719-1790, Chisti Silsila) in Sheikhupura Punjab whom we know today for his Heer – a canonical text of the Punjabi Kissa-Kav Heer continues to touch the collective heart of Punjab. As for the cycle of lending and borrowings, it is observed that Bulleh Shah was much influenced by the works of Shah Hussain, Sultan Bahu, Shah Saraf and by the verses of Baba Nanak, the first Sikh Guru. This paper offers a reading of Bulleh Shah’s verse as a cultural palimpsest that interrogates the Divine in the Sufi traditions in Punjabi literary context. In this paper you will also find English translations of eight Kafis which I have translated from their devanagari transliterations in Bulleh Shah Ki KaafiyaN, edited and anthologized by Professor Namvar Singh. The kafi translations have been incorporated within the paper.
Baba Bulleh Shah’s kafis in Urdu-Punjabi speak to the heart of the collective culture and consciousness of Sindh-Punjab of which they are also a representation. A significant reason for the saint-poet’s popularity is the fact that Bullah in his quest for God stands with the likes of Kabir and Nanak – beyond the limiting margins of religions that tag, trap and quarantine the formless divine in constricting cubicles. Located in a space of rustic simplicity and brotherhood, outside the walls of sectarian quarrels and anchoring that characterized Punjab of Aurangzeb’s times, Bulleh Shah’s voice transports us to a space of peaceful, mundane co-existence as it directly addresses the divine One at the same time. To quote from my translation of Kafi 4, titled ‘Ulte Hor Zamane Aaye’,
Topsy-Turvy Times Prevail
Topsy-turvy times prevail.
Crows hunt hawks,
sparrows on eagles salivate.
Such topsy-turvy times I say!
Iraqis are whipped and lashed and whipped,
while donkeys are pampered with tender wheat.
Topsy-turvy times prevail…
…………………………………..
from Huzoor, the orders hail,
Bullah says
who can then escape?
Strange, topsy-tipsy
times prevail.
(20, kafi 4, ‘Ulte Hor Zamaane Aaye’)
This particular verse reminds one of Kabir’s subversive poetics known in Sadh and Nath Bhash[3] as Ulat Bansi [4]. While Kabir’s voice strives to reprimand and correct religious rigidities around him, Bulleh Shah’s tenor is softer and more on the lines of carnival (leela[5]) and celebration. In lieu of this feature we find in his poetics an active engagement with folk, legendary and cultural subtexts of Sindh-Punjab. In this aspect, one observes, Bulleh Shah’s poetry is quite basic; it is however, more in resonance with his poet ancestor Baba Nanak’s verse[6] which skillfully builds on the cultural semiotics of Punjab as it was during pre and post Babur times. Medieval India which witnessed the chaotic influx, the resistance and assimilation of Islam and Islamic culture in the Hindu-Buddhist heartland was also witness to a period of rich spiritual mingling which expressed itself through Saint-poets of the Bhakti/Sufi paths. Over a period of about five hundred years the land saw a caravan of mystics and saints like Lal Ded, Kabir, Namdev, Nanak, Meera, Chaitanya, Narasimha, Rumi, Farid, Sachal Sarmast, Waris Shah, Bulleh Shah, Gulabdas and others - that positioned themselves outside the dividing religious lines and belong to one and all.
To return to Baba Bulleh Shah, here is a Kafi titled, “Ve Dil Jaani Pyareya”:
O my precious sweetheart…, I Say
O my precious sweetheart
what spell is this I say
you’ve cast !
dissolved in you
i cannot sever,
it’s you who shy and sunder.
Buffaloes have come, not you O Ranjha.
You, who blew-in separation
and slit my gut.
Precious sweetheart O,
O Julekha* of my Egypt-like-soul,
remove the veil I beg you,
let me not dissolve, in tears.
BulleyaH the burqa* flutters in your heart,
it is your love that makes him dance.
Darling precious of my heart I say,
what spell is this you’ve caste, I say!
(24, Kafi 8, ‘Ve Dil Jaani Pyaareya’)
(*Yusuf and Julekha - legendary Egyptian lovers immortalized for their great love in Punjabi kissa. *Burqa – the black veil Muslim women wear to cover their face and form.)
Bulleh Shah’s semiotic is rich with references to stories of legendary love immortalized over time in the Kissa-Kaav tradition of Punjabi lore. Bullah speaks from a location of deep embodied love, it is a space of divine love that is sublime, transcendental and eternal in scope. This spiritual marriage and the courage of conviction is the poet’s strength for he speaks directly to/of the Cosmic soul. Pitched at this tenor the junoon (divine madness) of Bulleh Shah’s ibaadat (devotion) is close to the song-and-dance ecstasy that we find in Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s Krishna bhakti. It is here in the surrender to divine ecstasy that the Sufi and the Sant, and the nirguna and the saguna aspect of worship unite. To quote from an essay by Mahwash Shoaib,
Bulleh Shah, born to a prestigious family, had chosen for his spiritual guide someone from a lower class [which] was disgraceful enough, but what he did next to win his teacher’s heart was outrageous. Annoyed by his arrogance that prevented his disciple from overcoming his ego, his teacher Shah Inayat had banished Bulleh Shah from his company. Bulleh Shah learned the dances and idioms of dancing girls; then, discovering that Shah Inayat would be attending a festival at the shrine of a saint, he dressed himself in women’s clothing and danced and sang before his teacher for forgiveness. The woman in his song becomes a symbol of the soul yearning to reach its destination, union with God, and ready to endure any pain to do so.
The anecdote of cross-dressing is an interesting extension of the romantic-love metaphor so common to Sufis who approached God as husband or sweetheart. This aspect was common also to the Saguna aspect of Krishna bhakti. In Kafi 8 (quoted above) it is worth noting that Ranjha is referenced as the quintessential shepherd God while Bulleh Shah takes on the feminine voice as Ranjha’s beloved Heer symbolic of the individual soul addressing the One Supreme soul, husband, lord. Another legendary pair of lovers mentioned here in the same spirit is Yusuf and Julekha (Zulaikha) from Egypt. The divine journey is thus imbricated into the Sufi syntax as the great all consuming love of the divine. In keeping with the tradition of Sufis in the Punjab, Bulleh Shah wrote in Punjabi and accessed and idealized the legendary romances of (the Punjabi kissas) of Heer Ranjha, Sohni Mahiwal, and Sassi Punnu besides other love legends like Yusuf Zulaikha, Laila Majnun and Shirin Farhad. Posturing as the pining lovelorn Heer, Sohni or Julekha, Bulleh Shah dissolves in the love of the great lover husband God. The tenor of his kafis often strikes a note that recalls the intensity of young love that is reckless and passionate – ‘Dissolved in you I cannot separate,’ ‘You’ve blown-in separation and slit my gut’. Madly, deeply in love Bullah the sufi fakir soon became the mascot of divine romantic love; in the legendary persona of the beautiful Heer, Sohni, Laila or Radha his verse continues to romance and enrapture generations of youthful hearts across country, culture and time. Before responding to Bullah’s work, here is a brief survey of the literary and non literary contexts that must have informed and fed his work.
BULLEH SHAH AS A SUFI IN PUNJAB
The Sufi cult is akin to mysticism. According to some scholars it is believed to have emerged from the interaction between Semitic Islam and Aryan Vedantism on the soil of India. A more popular belief dates the birth of Sufism to ninth century Arabia. However, “Aryan perceptions in Iran and then in India influenced it a great deal, more particularly in accentuating the emotional content as against the dry-as-dust self-denial of the Arabs.” “Literally speaking a Sufi is one who is pure or one who goes about with a woolen blanket. In Greek, he is a Sufi who is enlightened.” (64, Sekhon & Duggal). The main precepts of the path rest on the premise of God as omnipresent, all determining and God as a way of life. The Sufis (like the Bhakti saints) were iconoclastic and free spirited and pagan, they took from Islam their basic essence but sought the Divine through emotional attachment and personal experience, they saw Him as an all pervading presence in nature and in human hearts. Like the monistic vision of Nirguna bhakti, the Sufis saw the soul as distinct from the body and destined to finally merge in Divine Reality. On the journey to union with the divine, they too acknowledged the significance of the grace and guidance of a Guru (Murshed). Four stages marked the Sufi path: Nasoot, Malkoot, Jabroot, and Fana which translate as Spiritual discipline, Training with the Murshed, Enlightenment and Merger (Yoga) in the Divine.
In the footsteps of the Muslim conquerors, the Sufis had arrived in India. As they located themselves among the common people of the land, outside the Islamic Sharia, they soon picked up aspects of the indigenous spiritual, cultural and religious fora. There were several Sufi schools known as Silsilas - about twelve Silsilas were prevalent in fourteenth century India; and the 4 most popular among these were the Chistis, the Suhrawardis, the Qadiriyahs (Bulleh Shah’s) and the Naqshbandis. As Sekhon and Duggal state in the History of Punjabi Literature, the most popular among the Sufi silsilas were those that combined in themselves the best of every faith and promoted it among the people. Bulleh Shah, the noted Sufi poet, belonged to this group.” (65) Baba Bulleh Shah (1680-1758), a Sufi Fakir of the Qadiri Silsila was part of the Punjabi Sufi tradition of eighteenth century Punjab. He hailed from a small village Panduke near Kasur in the Lahore district of (west) Punjab, he wrote in Punjabi and was groomed in the Punjabi tradition of Sufiss. He lived during a time when, around the turn of 17th century, history witnessed the exit of two warring leaders – Aurangzeb (1707) and Guru Gobind Singh (1708). It can therefore be surmised that Bulleh Shah’s India was a land rent with instability and chaos at the top which must have translated into much mayhem in the lives of ordinary gentry; for there was on one hand among the Sikh and Muslim communities, an absence of strong leaders and direction, on the other hand was the insidious presence of the East India company, while towards the Deccan we find a growing Maratha empire. This is the circumstance in which we can visualize the presence of sufi contemporaries like Shah Saraf (1629-1724) and Bulleh Shah of the Qadiri silsila, and also we have from the Chisti silsila (school), Ali Haider (1690-1751) in Multan, and Waris Shah (1719-1790) in Sheikhupura.
There is doubt regarding the efficacy of Bulleh Shah’s biographical details and the little that we know has been handed down to us orally. Named Abdullah Shah by his parents, he was born into a Sayyed family that claimed direct dissent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad. His father was the village Darvesh who taught and preached at the local mosque. After his early education in Panduke, probably at his father’s feet, it is believed he went to Kasur for higher education where he continued to live for the rest of his life. His spiritual teacher Shah Inayat Qadiri (1655-1718) was a remarkable leader and social reformer from Jhok, Sindh. He is well known in history as the sword bearing Sufi who led an uprising – a protest against the ruling Mughal king. In a different fashion however, Bulleh Shah too was a poet of protest. Due to his liberal, unorthodox views, he was ostracized by local Muslim priests and had earned their ire to such an extent that on his death in 1757, they refused to lead the prayer service.
Three centuries hence the scene is so transformed that people vie to be buried in the vicinity of his shrine where he lies in Kasur. Baba Bullah (or just Bullah as he is fondly called) is among the few sufi fakirs to have prevailed through time. His poetry has continues to speak to and flourish equally in the hearts of Hindus, Muslims and Punjabis across the world. An intimate sense of urgency envelopes his feminine voice and cosmic connect with God; metaphorically addressed as Ranjha, Majnu, Yusuf or Mahiwal the legendary lovers of Udhrite2 poetry in Punjabi and Persian lore, God is also present in his work as Krishna the flute playing shepherd-god to whom the poet is a besotted Radha The renderings of his kafis in compositions by Runa Laila, Abida Parveen, Rabbi, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Tochi Raina and in songs in Bollywood cinema continue to captivate people’s hearts and transport them even today.
BULLAH’S KAFIS THAT CONVERSE
Baba Bulleh Shah’s kafis/ poems are like open conversations, often they begin with an address in a Kabir-like fashion, they are also reformist however his writings have a softness and an open uncritical approach to gender – an aspect that is absent in Kabir who generally berates the feminine as Maya the temptress that misleads and beguiles the spiritual seeker. What is more, Bullah’s location in a space of surrender and in the voice of the pining feminine, is easily accessed by the average human mind who may find Kabir’s esoteric references to tantric detail overwhelming or even difficult to fathom at times. In contrast Bullah’s simpler portrayal of spiritual journey through the analogy of romantic love and the associated trajectory of despair and ecstasy as the lovers unite and separate, offers the ordinary human an easier means of understanding the dynamic of divine experience. Kafi 12 where he urges God - his Lover/Yaar - to come pay him a visit and end the separation, beautifully reiterates the grief of separation:
Come dear one visit me
Come dear one visit me!
make inquiries, come see
how encircled in grief
i live.
O Come meet me!
Severed from your dreams within,
snapped is my subtle chord
O come dear one, visit me!
Fleeced in forsaken forests, O SaiyaN
I was, surrounded by tigers and pigs.
O come dear one,
visit and discover for yourself.
Mullah-Kazi instruct to deceive
and lead us down
the maya-maze:
Scoundrels, pitch nets
across the world’s four ends.
They claim their deeds
are the Shariat’s decree,
In shackles I drag my fettered feet.
Love asks not what caste, what faith.
Love protests the Shariat’s mandate.
Across the rivers is Sajana’s desh,
Cunning orbits my innocent ways.
Come find me Yaar make haste.
Your rosary, Satguru, I’ve firmly held,
why then the delay?
Bulleh Shah will meet you midway,
it’s a promise,
give him some succor Yaar
please come visit,
come ask me how I live.
My lover resides within O!
blind in sunlight
whom then did I seek?
Visit me dear one come,
make inquiries to see
how encircled in grief
i live.
Dear one come meet and see!
(28, Kafi 12, ‘Aa Mil Yaar Saar le Meri’)
(*Yaar/ Sajana/ SaiyaN – Friend, companion, beloved. *Maya – illusion symbolized as woman, temptress. *Shariat – Dictates of the Koran, holy Islamic scriptures.)
In the following kafi Bulleh Shah celebrates the joy of spiritual union:
Come comrades, my bliss celebrate
Come comrades, my bliss celebrate!
I found me a husband in Ranjha beloved.
Mubaraq tidings the day has brought,
Ranjha knocked at our threshold.
Staff in hand, blanket on shoulder,
his visage was like that of a shepherd!
Come celebrate my bliss comarades!
Bulleh Shah struck a deal -
sipped the bowl of poison, he sipped,
heedless to matters of loss or gain,
he chose the satchel of suffering and pain.
Come celebrate my bliss comrades,
I found myself a husband,
a Ranjha beloved!
(25, Kafi 9, ‘Aawo Saiyon Rul Deo Ni Vadhai’)
Thus, swinging between periods of separation/seeking; finding/celebration and the yoga of union, the kafis run. The semiotic of his Kafis weaves cameos embroidered with anecdotes and details from folklore, history and landscape of Punjab, also worth noting is his reference to the legendary narratives of the kissa-kav . Ranjha the shepherd lover “Staff in hand, blanket on the shoulder,’ is an example in kafi 9. In kafi 12, the orthodox Mullah and Kazis who claim the Sharia opposea love marriage, are labeled as ‘tigers and pigs’ and the world they create is a ‘jungle’ where Bullah feels lost and lonely.
His poetry in the feminine voice brings a tenor that charms and refreshes. In Kafi 12 (quoted above) Bullah is a damsel in distress; troubled by petty politics of the world jungle she turns to his “Saiyan” for help. Another example of the feminine ideal is kafi 71 (136) where Bullah postures as a ‘kamli bairaagan’ - the gullible, loony-in-love maiden who in a state of forgetfulness, drops her ‘ghoonghat’, drops the veil of worldly shackles, and breaks into a dance expressing divine rapture in a state of Sama - divine abandonment. The state of complete forgetfulness of the self is seen in Kafi 5 as well; here the poet is so lost to a trance like state, he has no clue of anything not even of the state of his Lord who is the focus of all his meditations, he says, “Ignorant of my own state, how can i update you on how my Sajana fares?”
Bulleh Shah verse often alludes to God as Krishna, kafi 95 is an example where God as the shepherd lover recalls the figure of Krishna specifically due to a reference in the kafi to the beloved’s flute music which drives Radha (symbolic of the poet) into a trance and to a state of forgetfulness. However, unlike the erotica of Jayadev’s Gita-Govindam, the love metaphor in Bullah’s semiotic steers clear of the carnal and erotic. Love in his kafis is a sublime transcendental connect where the lovers (the seeker and the Supreme) are wedded in a sacred love bond, where the journey is about a deep forgetfulness as the seeker journeys and journeys, as the seeker progresses he/she bursts into sublime expressions of bliss, in the spiritual landscape such as this gender is but a charming location and fact of the flesh. I quote kafi 5, that resonates with this fact:
Disembodied, lost…
Disembodied,
lost to my own self
how am I to give you updates
on Sajana’s state?
One birth here, there a death -
thus runs the circuit
of arrivals and exits.
Neither earth nor fire I am,
nor water nor wind.
In the gullet
rattles a pebble,
the fool quakes,
‘Who spake?’
Bullah says, Sain is salt
that seasons my dough’s
each cell.
Disembodied and lost
to my own self,
how am i to update you
on Sajana’s welfare?
(21, Kafi 5, ‘Apne Tunn di Khabar na Koi’)
( Tunn – body, frame. SaiN – God, Husband. Sajana – lover, husband.)
Carnival festivities and nomadic motifs are another feature of Bulleh Shah’s poetic wares. Dionysian motifs of love, divine liquor, ecstatic dancing, market scenes and a general sense of community conveyed in his poems through references to family and neighborhood; also Bullah’s frequent references to the company of pir-fakirs, saints and dervish lend to the business of spiritual self-work a sense of collective journeying. Kafi no 9 where the poet invites his comrades to celebrate with him a spiritual merger (or arrival) is one example. Then there are kafis with vanjaras (gypsies) and fakirs – an always-in-flux, floating population that peoples Bulleh Shah’s poetic horizons with horses and ponies carrying their humble load. In such poems Bulleh Shah seems to shout out to Charles Baudelaire and his ‘Gypsies Travelling’.
Local birds and animals (crow, hawks, sparrows and eagles; donkeys, bulls), family relationships, words of the local Punjabi-Urdu dialect, habits, seasons and rituals of small towns and regions of the Punjab find mention. Nature and family metaphors are used especially in kafis that aim to subvert or awaken the listener to a higher world. Kafi 4 quoted in this paper (‘Ulte hor zamaane aaye’) is an example where the poet laments the chaos of the world. On the other hand, Kafi no 1 urges the human soul to prepare herself for marriage to the lord: the preparation involves collecting the dowry of good karma, the weaving and dying of the body-cloth and the cultivation of qualities that will please the divine Lord. The list includes waking up early, bathing and praying, living a life of moderation and being in remembrance of the Lord constantly.
CONCLUSION
To sum up, a domesticated sense of Bakhtin’s idea of the creative ‘carnivalesque’ is experienced in Bulleh Shah’s kafis. He builds an atmosphere of vairaag (of spiritual disengagement) etched with self forgetting and sweet surrender in poems that follow the confessional mode. On the other hand are also poems which operate in an atmosphere of pastoral community consciousness, where the poetic voice celebrates divine love and simultaneously educates the community on the true essence of God who is singular, supreme and formless, and transcends all binaries and boundaries.
In this aspect Bulleh Shah’s work is closer to Nanak’s. Gender is referenced through the conventional, the symbolic spiritual and through the domestic space (no erotica or reference to maya or tantra) Bullah’s poetic sensibility draws its substance from the Arabic, Punjabi and Vaishnav traditions. As a female subject he is simple, naïve, beautiful and basic; all in all his is a mystic’s world where surrender and surrendering is a continuous process in a state of perennial elysian bliss. Bulleh’s poems uplift the reader / listener and take him/her deeper into divine engagement within. Often the kafi begins with an address to a silly young girl, chiding her for sleeping away and wasting the precious gold of life. On other occasions there are family members (real or symbolic), in archetypal roles - parents, sisters or sisters-in-law - being chided for being overly attached to the transitory material world. The kafis impress upon the listener the urgency of the matter – the passing of time and the need for a seeker to turn towards the divine that eternally beckons and calls.
I have endeavored here, to examine, analyze and experience the poetry of Baba Bulleh Shah in both its original Punjabi and English translation. Bulleh Shah lived in a chaotic, highly politicized Punjab rent by bloody violence over issues of religion, fanatic oppression and power. On one side of the scale was the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and on the other the Sikh Guru Gobind Singh. Among his Sufi contemporaries were poets like Sachal Sarmast and Waris Shah. The politics of his times however does not find mention in his verse, what does get reflected is the humble pace of human life with their social, cultural, and moral structures of routine. This would include Bulleh’s critique of orthodox religion, frequent references to prevailing social and familial ceremonies, images from daily life and romantic analogies from the love lore of the Arabian Udhrite and Punjabi Kissa-Kaav narrative. The paper has thus attempted to read and locate Bulleh Shah - the prince like sufi poet, in the text and context of Sufi Punjab and its literary culture. Through the translations incorporated here, the paper has tried to engage with and bring into English, the subtler nuances of Bullah’s work – aspects which manifest in dramatic address to the divine and in romantic posturing. The tenor of the speaking-voice is intimate and direct, it therefore brings to the kafi the color of romance, joy and rhythm, and infuses the poem with a sense of emotional abandon, a carnivalesque sense of creative joy and spiritual freedom. I shall end the paper with two kafis (1 & 6 ) of Bulleh Shah in English translation. The seeker who has been travelling along the spiritual-spiral expresses his anxiety over hitting a dead-end on the road; God the beloved has left the neighbourhood and pangs of separation plague the Ashiq Sufi’s soul:
Beloved Abandoned the Neighborhood
Beloved abandoned the neighborhood
Rubba, propose my next move.
He changed residence,
to settle among new friends,
Rubba, propose my next move,
beloved abandoned the neighborhood….
Fire leaps and scorches the core.
separation scalds the woman’s soul.
Rubba propose my next move.
beloved abandoned the neighborhood….
Bullah without beloved yaar,
Lives neither here nor there.
Rubba suggest me my next move.
My friend abandoned the neighbourhood..
(13, Kafi 1, ‘Uth Gaye GawaNdo Yaar, ki Kariye’)
Love-Struck. Now Tell, What Next?
Love-struck.
Now say, what next?
I neither can live nor kill myself.
You heed now to my request,
through days and nights I’m restless,
without you beloved, not even an eye-lash snaps.
Love-struck.
Now say, what next?
I neither can live nor kill myself.
This fire is of our separation,
of the break in our relation.
How without drowning (tell),
can one cross the ocean?
Love-struck.
Now say, what next?
I neither can live nor kill myself.
On Bulla fell a heavy hurdle.
Someone, act, advise please -
how now to hold such hell.
Love-struck.
Now say, what next?
I can neither live,
nor kill myself.
Love-struck, now tell me
(please) what next?
(22, Kafi 6, ‘Ab Lagan Lagee ki Kariye’)
END NOTES