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Shared shades of Punjab

There is a bitter pill we tend to camouflage in all our Punjabi brouhaha — a tender gash that still runs deep and hurts under its flimsy wrap – Partition.

Shared shades of Punjab

A faqir with Nalain Mubaraq (replicas of Prophet Mohammad’s holy footwear) around his neck



Shumita Madanlal Didi

There is a bitter pill we tend to camouflage in all our Punjabi brouhaha — a tender gash that still runs deep and hurts under its flimsy wrap – Partition. It tore our very fabric apart. We live in a fractured land with fractured dreams even today. Punjab and its people were ruthlessly separated from their homes, lands and each other. As a friend sombrely stated on his first visit from East Punjab, India, to Lahore, West Punjab, Pakistan, “Going across the border is like an essential rite of passage that every Punjabi needs to undertake if they are to find their own missing pieces and feel somewhat whole again.”

Recently we were sipping green tea, slowly savouring the still afternoon listening to Gulzar saab’s inimitable husky tones reciting Amrita Pritam’s poems on a somewhat primitive music player sprawled in comfort at Pakistani painter Rubbina Gogi’s studio, gently sheltered from June’s sweltering heat, which spared no one on either side of the Wagah-Attari border. The studio is on what is still called Sunder Dass Road, Lahore. Rubbina loves Amrita Pritam with a passion and has read every line ever written by her or about her. She once made a collection of songs especially for Amritaji and sent them to her on one of her own sporadic visits to Lahore from Italy where she practiced as a painter for over 20 years.

We urged Rubbina Gogi to come join us in East Punjab (charhda) from West Punjab (lehnda) to exhibit her striking portraits and luminous landscapes and share through workshops with students and other practitioners in Preetnagar, Chandigarh and Delhi. Her training and practice as a painter trained from Russia, Italy and Pakistan would surely add to our bouquet of colours here. But she says she lost her zest for travelling to India when Amritaji passed away and rues how can she ever make up for that loss — that East Punjab and a visit to Delhi would surely feel barren without Amrita Pritam.

Narrating to her what Imroze, Amrita’s life companion, had said to me the day Amrita was cremated, as we saw the flames flicker on her pyre, “Oh taan beej bann ke udd vi gayi hoani hai...Gujranwalay pohonch ke hun taq ugg vi payi hoani hai.” (She must have become a tiny seed and taken wings by now. She must have already planted herself in the soil of Gujranwala and sprouted by now.)

I attempt to condole. Imroze himself was at a loss to explain how after years of painting his way into Amrita’s heart and life. He started writing poetry the very day she died. He writes seamlessly till today. Poets and poetry live beyond borders of states, nations, countries; even ages and thus time itself. The borders of our mind’s constructs are made porous by poetry that stems unbidden and writs itself — living on gloriously for centuries.

A point in case is the poetry of Baba Bulleh Shah. A dhaadi street singer called Akhtar Ali who is a regular at (what is still called) Laxmi Chowk, Lahore, dexterously plays a harmonium slung around his neck and sings Baba Bulleh Shah’s kalaam to us as we sit eating scrumptious dinner at one of the open-air street-food cafés at 3 am with poet and Radio Mast FM 103’s popular RJ/host Afzal Sahir, who has a huge fan following in East Punjab as the calls to his show prove. And where he recites poetry from both Punjabs and plays songs from both sides, too. An old faqir pauses by our table with scintillating lights glimmering on the Nalain Mubaraq...(replicas of Prophet Mohammad’s holy footwear) slung around his venerable neck, collecting alms to feed the poor at the end of the holy month of Ramzan.

As we sat humming Bulleh Shah’s kaafi along with wonderful debutant singer Hassan Shah (much to the amazement of the somewhat star-struck dhaadi), it was not lost to us that we lived just a few hundred years down from the great Sufi poet of the 17th century. Were we all just Punjabis then living in a wide-spread combined Punjab?

Bulleh Shah’s kaafis are sung on either side of the barbed wire even today ever reminding us of our shared cultural heritage. These are discussed with scholarly zeal since over 25 years at the sangat run by famous poet Najm Hosain Syed and singer Samina Syed at Jail Road, Lahore. They are originally from Batala and Delhi, respectively. Similarly at Baba Bulleh Shah’s baithak in Delhi many of us originally from Jhanng, Abbotabad, Sialkot, Pindi, Lahore, etc. also do it. It is heart warming, yet ironic, that we voluntarily share and claim what has been wrested away from us, as if alien.

Another example that could highlight our common cause is how we make our own the poetry, ghazals and songs sung by many famous Pakistani singers, including the late Malika Pukhraj. She has a permanent place in our hearts and had joyously introduced in a duet, her daughter Tahira Syed to us in India with “Lo Phir Basant Aayi”.

It was thus a pleasant surprise to see that accompanying the ever effervescent and much admired by the hoi polloi (designer garments displayed in Pakistani and Italian designer houses) Lahore-based clothes designer Rano Usman to Rubbina Gogi’s studio was none other than the grand-daughter of Malika Pukhraj, Farazeh Syed, who is a painter and mellifluous singer. When they arrived we were immersed in reading beautifully illustrated children’s books from India out loud to Meherma, Gogi’s young daughter whose name resounds from many a poem. I am reminded of my father’s….“teray baajh dilaan deya meherma koi sunay na dil da haal..jadd tun turr jaavain chadd ke, dil uddna chahay naal…” (Without you oh salve bearer mine, no other listens to my heart’s call, when you leave me asunder, my heart wants to fly along..).

Rano Usman, I knew from a leisurely walk just a couple of evenings ago in the sprawling green gardens of Model Town. It is Lahore’s original secular cosmopolitan housing society formed by the likes of Sir Ganga Ram and other visionaries of that calibre. Our Lahori walks through Bagh-e-Jinnah (Lawrence Gardens) and other parks were assiduously conducted by Wazirabadi painter/ photographer Akram Varraich. Varraich has exhibited his works, along with Shahid Mirza of Lahore Chitrakar Studios, about a decade ago in our City Beautiful Chandigarh at the Plaza square and Nek Chand’s very own Rock Garden. Nek Chand died yearning to build a Rock Garden in Pakistan, the land where he was born.

It was uncanny when on popular demand Farazeh Syed tentatively enquired would it be to our liking if she sang “Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu” ( I address you Waris Shah today) by Amrita Pritam. She said she had not sung it for six years but somehow was feeling comfortable singing that now. We looked at each other in profound awe because just minutes ago before they had arrived we had been listening to just that very poem. Amrita Pritam in Rubbina Gogi’s studio at Sunder Dass Road Lahore being recited with great effect by Gulzar saab, recorded in Mumbai. And now it was being beautifully sung by Farazeh Syed, the granddaughter of Malika Pukhraj, in Lahore. So where are those borders which were to keep our love for each other at bay? Are we not eroding them effectively and making them inconsequential through the internet.

Physically, we are working on bringing out a music CD with talented yet lesser known singers from both sides singing the poetry of the “other”, who, in reality, is a reflection of our own selves. May these borders fray away to become productively porous and may these distances dissolve through the likes of music, poetry, books, films and the many-hued shared colours of our great Punjab.

The writer has been to Pakistan a few times, under the auspices of Saanjhey Ranng Punjab De, a cultural endeavour and registered trust, committed to people-to-people peace initiatives through the arts.

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