"A wonderful translation" comments Catherine Pickstock
I often translate Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi devotional songs into English and provide a short commentary on their cultural and spiritual resonances. I thought I might share one here - it is one of my favourite devotional tracks, based on a tragic love story of the Punjab which is suffused (!) with symbolism.
With the Heart of Clay
Across South Asian devotional literatures and their contemporary poetic iterations, the image of the lover who embarks on the arduous journey to his/her beloved undoubtedly forms one of the most malleable, and thus fertile, narrative tropes, taking on certain distinctive (and often deeply localized) lineaments of the cultural and geographical contexts in which it is articulated. Thus, the paradigmatic love stories of the Punjab are embedded in evocatively Punjabi idioms and imageries, even as they bear echoes of certain broader theological templates of devotional love (such as the eternally perfected union of Radha and Krishna, or the allegorized union of the Quranic figures Yusuf and Zulaikha).
This song is based on one such Punjabi folktale – that of the lovers named Sohni and Mahiwal. Sohni, the daughter of a potter, lives by the banks of the river Chenab (where many of the trysts and tragedies of Punjab’s folklore have found their confluence). One day, a trader from Bukhara (Izzat Beg) arrives in Punjab with his caravan and settles in Sohni’s town. He catches a glimpse of the potter’s beautiful daughter and immediately falls in love; Sohni, too, is instantly enraptured by the travelling merchant. Moored to the soil of Punjab by his beloved’s glance, Izzat Beg becomes a servant in Sohni’s house, tending the local buffaloes (he thus becomes known as ‘Mahiwal’, meaning ‘buffalo-herder’). This narrative plot recalls the other classical love story of the Punjab (Hir-Ranjha), where Ranjha too becomes a cowherd to stay close to his beloved (this image is, in turn, redolent of that supremely enchanting cowherd, Krishna). Sohni’s family soon discover the illicit affair and she is forcibly married to another local potter; her kin could brook no marriage with an ‘outsider’. Meanwhile, Mahiwal retires with his lonely heart to a hut across the Chenab river, donning the robes of a faqir (mendicant). Every night, with a trusted clay-vessel as her float, Sohni swims across the river to be united with her lover. Sohni’s sister-in-law soon learns of the lovers’ moonlight meetings and in her spite, bitterness, or jealousy (or perhaps all three), she replaces the baked clay-pot on which Sohni travels with an unbaked vessel. That night, the unsuspecting Sohni embarks on her journey, but her pot soon dissolves in the heart of the Chenab, carrying her away with it. Mahiwal throws himself into the swirling waters to save her but the waves enfold the lovers in death, where alone they are re-united.
This song imagines a dialogue on that fateful night between Sohni and her (unbaked) clay-pot. Sohni beseeches her vessel to stay afloat; the pot woefully declares its uselessness for the task. There are multiple layers of spiritual symbolism here but I will mention only a few resonant points – such love stories are frequently understood in Sufi contexts as allegories of the human soul’s longing for the divine beloved (the lover is concurrently mired in, and liberated by, the swirling torrent of love); Rumi and other Sufi poets develop the metaphor of ‘cooking’ oneself in the fire of spiritual yearning (the image of the unbaked vessel is thus rich with mystical allusions); one’s spiritual guide is often represented as the ‘boat’ who gently leads the aspirant across the stormy seas of the world (this parallel is explicitly made in the song in a portion I have left untranslated); sometimes in Sufi universes the Prophet Muhammad is cast as the archetypal boatman, and sometimes as the resplendent maternal stream towards whom all tributaries flow. Needless to say, my translation cannot re-create the poignance and the passion of the original Punjabi, but I hope it gives you a ‘feel’ for the kind of devotional vitality which remains at the rustic heart of so many of Punjab’s poetic and religious expressions.
Across the Chenab river,
Lies my beloved’s hut.
Oh, my faithful clay-vessel,
Come – let us make our way.
Under this stormy shroud of night,
As these unrelenting waves surge,
Come – let us make our way.
Unfired, unformed, is the dust of my being,
Unavailing is my labour.
Those whose earth is shorn of heat,
Their end too will be raw.
This truth is known to all.
Rely not on this crumbling carapace,
To carry you safely ashore.
Under this stormy shroud of night,
As these unrelenting waves surge,
Come – let us make our way.
Look, now – the waves roar with violent vigour.
But don’t lose heart,
Take me, take me to the other side.
Tonight, tonight I must meet Mahiwal.
My heart utters
Only
This pulsating cry.
Today, a lover will be met
With the corpse
Of his beloved.
Oh, my trusted clay-pot,
Carry me,
Carry me,
Ashore.
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