Why do stories survive?

The word ‘kissa’ originates from the Arabic term ‘qissa’, which means a story, a narrative or a fable. This distinctive narrative genre flourished from 16th century onward, particularly in Punjabi and Sindhi literature. These works are epic poems or prose tales, often recited or sung using folk motifs to allegorise Sufi mysticism. The lovers’ trials symbolise the soul’s longing for divine union. These initially circulated orally and were later formalised in written form by Sufi poets in Punjabi.

These kissas were composed between the 16th and 18th centuries, an era when women in Punjab and Sindh had virtually no agency over marriage, mobility or self-determination. Bound by caste systems, the love legends became symbols of defiance against forced unions, societal taboos and the commodification of female bodies. They transformed personal anguish into cultural signs of resistance.

The famous kissas that are part of the collective memory of Punjabis include ‘Heer-Ranjha’, written by Waris Shah in 1766. Heer was the daughter of a wealthy Jat landowner. She falls in love with Ranjha, a cowherd. Her family forces her into marriage for caste prestige. She, against all odds, secretly reunites with Ranjha but her uncle poisons her on her wedding day.

Sohni — from ‘Sohni-Mahiwal’, written by Fazal Shah Sayyad in the 1700s — is a potter’s daughter, who loves buffalo herder Mahiwal, a nobleman in disguise. She is married against her wishes and despite the conventional vows of marriage, she swims across Chenab on an earthen pot to meet her beloved. Her in-laws sabotage her attempts by replacing a half-baked pot, which leads to her drowning.

Sassi — from ‘Sassi-Punnun’, written by Hashim Shah in the 1780s — is a washerwoman in love with the prince, Punnun. His brothers abduct him and Sassi treks across the desert, thirsty and hungry, and dies on the burning sand. Rather than waiting in vain, she takes the hazardous journey to search for her beloved, making her quest not only physical but also mystical. Sahiba — from ‘Mirza-Sahiba’, written by Pilu in the 1700s — falls in love with her cousin Mirza. They elope on horseback and she breaks his arrows fearing that he may use these against her family members chasing them.

Heer, Sohni, Sassi and Sahiba are not just submissive heroines, but insurgents who turn desire into defiance. They are rebels who defy the social ordery.

I do not see them as symbols of tragedy, but blueprints of resistance. They refused to be spectators of their fate. They chose love over obedience, agency over fear, and embodied an early feminist edict that predates feminism itself, a moral insurgency in the language of love. Though written by men, these stories subvert gender norms by centring women’s interiority and choice.

Sassi embodies ethical feminism, choosing death over compromise; Heer’s intellectual fire debates with the clergy; Sohni’s raw embodiment of desire inverts the myth, where she swims towards him and not vice-versa; Sahiba’s arrow-breaking is critiqued as naivety, but it was an attempt to protect both her worlds — the family she was born into and the love she chose.

The dhadhi performers, the itinerant bards who carried these stories from village to village, were also the custodians of this oral history. They infused performances with rhythmic chants, moral asides and audience participation. These stories were sung in village gatherings, gurdwaras and Sufi shrines.

Were these stories a form of protest? A political act? Giving a voice to the voiceless? The stories, rooted in folklore and infused with Sufi mysticism, equate earthly love, ishq-e-majazi, with divine longing, ishq-e-haqiqi.

Dhadhis form the bedrock of the survival of these legends. These wandering minstrels, often from marginalised communities, traversed villages with their sarangi and a dhadd, an hour-glass shaped percussion, that transformed static tales into immersive spectacles. Their renditions were not rote recitations but dynamic improvisations, laced with local idioms, and moral interpolations tailored for the zeitgeist. A dhadhi might elongate Heer’s lament to critique dowry practices or amplify Sohni’s defiance to empower the women in the audience. In essence, Heer, Sohni, Sassi and Sahiba weren’t just women characters, but cultural grenades lobbed by Sufi poets in the voice of the dhadhis.

These iconic characters haunt the Punjabi landscape, where every woman wants to be a Heer and every man a Ranjha. The kissas have entered literature, theatre and painting as enduring references. Amrita Pritam evokes that spirit of Heer in her much-loved poem ‘Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu’; it ceases to be just a poem but regurgitates the memory of Heer. Written in the immediate aftermath of Partition, it resurrects the 18th-century Sufi poet Waris Shah to witness Punjab’s second apocalypse:

Ajj aakhaan Waris Shah nu, kiton qabran vichon bol… Te aj kitab-e-ishq da koi agla varka phol (Today I call Waris Shah: speak from your grave… And turn a new page in the book of love).

Where Waris once transformed a single woman’s doomed passion into an epic, Pritam now demands he do the same for the millions of daughters violated, abducted and silenced during 1947. Pritam, a secular modernist, invokes a love that is no longer mystical but soaked in blood. This poem had become like the national poem for Punjabis on both sides of the border.

Love stories exist in every country, region and era. Most of them end in death. Perhaps that is why they stick in our collective memory, because death freezes them at the height of their passion.

In Verona, Italy, a 13th century gothic house is mythologised as Juliet’s home. Tourists arrive by the hundreds, leaving love letters and confessions on ‘Juliet’s wall’. The letters are pleas for advice on heartbreak, crushes — often addressed directly to Juliet — creating a chaotic mosaic of paper scraps, hearts and graffiti. When I visited this iconic site, I was told by the guide that a custodian began replying anonymously to each letter, making the recipients believe that the spirt of Juliet was watching over them.

These stories are not part of documented history. No court records, inscriptions or eyewitness accounts prove they ever lived. Yet each is tied to real geography, clans and shrines that ‘believers’ treat as “proof”.

The kissas rebel against the social order by offering a proto-feminist ethic where women dictate the terms of whom to love and how much. Yet their constrained triumphs remind us: true liberation demands dismantling the structures that poison or bury such spirits. In an era of resurgent fundamentalisms, these legends endure as calls to action — reminding us that rebellion begins in the heart’s defiant chant. In an age of fleeting trends, Punjab’s kissas are alive and invite us to lose — and find — ourselves anew.

— The writer is a theatre director