Of all the folk tales of Punjab, Waris Shah’s Heer is
the most widely read, recited (actually, sung), commented upon and quoted love
story.
People have even done Ph.Ds on it. It is a very long poem, written in
the Punjabi baint meter, comprising of 630 odd stanzas of 6 to 12 or more lines
each.
Syed Waris Shah wrote it
sometime in the 1760s.
Rural folks in Punjab routinely
gather, as they always did, at the end of a hard day’s work, under a tree or a chappar
(thatched canopy) to smoke hukka and discuss and share the daily news,
views and common problems. It is not uncommon at such gatherings for someone to
sing a few passages from Heer. Folks listen to it, mesmerized both by the
melody and its contents. Older people would often quote a line or two from Waris
Shah’s Heer as a piece of wisdom in their conversations. In fact, Heer is
quoted by the rural folks more often than any other traditional book of wisdom.
The story of Heer and Ranjha, like
all such stories, is partly true and partly fiction. But it continues to have
such a powerful hold on the imagination of rural folks that they want to
believe it to be true.
Numerous people have written the
story of Heer before and after Waris Shah, the earliest being Damodar and
probably the latest being Ustad Daman. But it is only Waris Shah’s Heer that
the world knows about — or cares to know about. By writing Heer, Waris Shah not
only told a fascinating story but also raised the status of Punjabi from that
of a rustic
language, which was mostly a spoken language, to that of a language
of literature. Many believe Waris Shah is to Punjabi what Chaucer and
Shakespeare were to English or Sa’di was to Persian.
Waris Shah was born in a village in
district Sheikhupura but studied at Kasur. He was a contemporary of Bulleh Shah and they
are supposed to have studied at the same madrassah (not necessarily in the same
class) under the tutorship of one Hafiz Ghulam Murtaza Makhdumi Kasuri.
Waris Shah by all accounts
was a spiritual man, well versed in Islamic theology, but he was more of a
mystic than a “maulvi”. In fact, going through his Heer one cannot help but
wonder if Waris Shah were alive today would he be able to, or allowed to, write
a daring epic like Heer?
He wrote the story while staying at
the hujra (quarters) attached to a little mosque in village Malka Hans,
which falls in district Pak-Pattan (old district Sahiwal). The mosque
(picture below) exists even today.
More reviews about the Heer-Ranjha: The Story of Punjab’s First Feminist(Part One)