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Enjoy Pairhein Pavandi Saan by Mithu Tahir, the latest gem, presented by the chic Coke Studio.

In a country drifting under the spell of a militant Islam where lovers, in the name of honor, are axed to death, a great love saga lives on. Thirty miles East of Karachi and away from its ever-erupting ethnic violence, lies in peace the long dead city of Bhanbhore. In its glory, it was an emporium where merchants ‘exchanged turquoise and silk with topaz and a little wine’ and where Sassui yearned for her lover. On my first visit, its ruins were still ringing with her pleadings:

Pairhein pavandi saan, chavandee saan
rahi wanjh raat Bhanbhore mein

“I will fall on his feet and beg at him
spend the night in Bhanbhore”

The song composed centuries ago continues to remain popular and was playing on a donkey cart driver’s rickety cassette player. Even the tourist guide, a native Sindhi, was under its spell, so when I asked him about the inhabitants of the ruined city, he named only two – Sassui and Punhoon!

The bare bones of the Sassui Punhoon story have passed from generation to generation as an oral tradition. However, in the eighteenth century Shah Abdul Latif, the beloved saint and mystic poet of Sindh, composed it in a verse form. Among the many ancient love stories buried in the region, Latif was able to retrieve and preserve seven in his poetry. Sassui Punhoon is the longest and as rife as Laila Majnun of the Arabian Desert.

Spread over a vast area from Iran and Afghanistan to Pakistan and India, the details of Sassui Punhoon story may differ from region to region but the overall plot structure remains much the same. “Latif, like Shakespeare and Goethe, takes up ordinary tales that were known to the people of his day and renders them in glorious verse and employs them as instruments for the purpose of revealing the hidden side of our life’s beauty and power” writes A.K.Brohi, the eminent Pakistani jurist who is also considered an authority on Latif’s works.

Like Romeo and Juliet, Sassui and Punhoon were star-crossed lovers born in rival camps. Whereas Romeo and Juliet came from feuding families, Sassui Punhoon came from rival religions – Hinduism and Islam. While Shakespeare, found the two families ‘alike in dignity’ Latif, with his deep insight, revered both religions. Shakespeare lamented on the ‘ancient grudge’ of Montagues and Capulets; Latif, who had once undertaken a pilgrimage to Mata Hinglaj, the westernmost Tirtha (holy places) of Hinduism, must have lamented on the mutual hostility of the two noble religions, Islam and Hinduism. And as Shakespeare failed to thwart the star that blighted the fates of Romeo and Juliet so did Latif with Sassui and Punhoon’s. When Brohi says Latif reveals ‘the hidden side of our life’e beauty and power’ he points to the realistic depiction of the events and locale described by Latif and his symbolic exploration of the human struggle with the natural world and the human capacity to transcend hardship, and personal triumph won from defeat.

Sassui was born in an orthodox Hindu Brahmin family. An astrologer had predicted that she will marry a Muslim. This perturbed the parents and in order to save themselves from the disgrace they preferred to put her in a basket and leave her to the mercy of the river. The basket sailed to a washerman of Bhanbhore, and being childless he considered the baby in the basket a divine gift. His wife named the girl Sassui, the Moon, due to the radiance of her beauty. As she grew up the legends of her beauty began to spread far and wide and fate bought Punhoon, a prince of Kaitch-Makran, to Bhanbhore to marry her. Their happiness was short-lived and as soon as Punhoon’s father discovered that his son has married a washerman’s daughter, he summoned his other sons and sent them to Bhanbhore with the instructions to fetch Punhoon. The brothers reached Bhanbhore, drugged Punhoon with opium and in the dark of the night whisked him away on a camel’s back to Kaitch-Makran. This was the turning point that has made Sassui Punhoon one of the greatest stories of unrequited love.

When Sassui woke up and discovered that Punhoon had gone she embarks on a punishing journey in quest of her lover. Her journey ends with her death which becomes a means of uniting her with Punhoon. Latif’s greatest achievement, however, is that he uses Sassui’s plight as a metaphor for a mystic’s journey on the Divine Path. She follows the tracks of Punhoon’s caravan and asks his whereabouts from the mountains and the trees, pleading at the sun not to set soon and at the wind not to blow away Punhoon’s footsteps. She confronts barrier after barrier in her search as a seeker confronts on a mystic journey. But instead of her lover, she comes across a shepherd and his lust. She prays to God to save her honor, the earth cracks and she is swallowed leaving behind her veil. The shepherd, stunned at the spectacular divine intervention, builds a grave for her; Punhoon seeks her grave and dies next to it. Sassui’s journey ends with a defeat, but her death actually becomes a means of uniting her with Punhoon.

Much before the radios relayed Latif’s songs, the bards sang and performed his ballads on festive occasions, at town fairs and at the shrines of saints where large number of devotees gathered to pay homage. Their audience memorized these and passed on to the coming generations and thus the story passed to the villages and towns far and wide. Until few decades ago Latif’s Sassui Punhoon lived in every Sindhi house whether Hindu or Muslim, rich or poor, urban or rural. The peasants and the unlettered could quote his verse even with more ease. Even today the song of Sassui can mesmerize many Pakistanis.