After Shah Hussain we see emergence of another impactful poet, Sultan Bahu (1628-1691), in the seventeenth century. No two poets could be dissimilar while sharing certain strands of tradition. The former was a product of urban culture while the latter was born in a small town of Shorkot, in the vicinity of district of Jhang. Shah Hussain made a choice; he lived the life of a dispossessed man. Sultan Bahu, on the contrary, had all the good things the material life of his times could offer. He owned large tracts of fertile land and thus belonged to landed elite. But being inclined to mystic way of life and a poet distinguished him from the decadent landholders who, to a large measure, loved their parasitic existence. What he conspicuously shared with his Malamti (a member of Muslim mystic school that stresses self-depreciation as a means of self-purification) predecessor was the absolute mastery over Punjabi language which made the linguistic constructions in his verses an inexhaustible source of intellectual beauty and aesthetic joy.

How conditions and physical landscape affect poets and their imagination can be demonstrated by looking at verses of these two poets on the same subject. “Way of love is the eye of the needle/ you can pass through it if you are a thread,” says Shah Hussain, the city dweller. “You can earn (wages of) love if you afford to have a heart like a mountain,” declares Sultan Bahu, the gentleman from the countryside. The eye of the needle symbolising a narrow passage reflects the urban way of life and finesse expected of a lover to move like a thread. And expecting a lover to have a heart like a mountain obviously reflects the insight born of the rural life marked by wide expanses that requires him to stand firm like a mountain. The images of the needle and mountain are equally evocative. Pointing to the myriad aspects of the same phenomenon, they stand in a sharp contrast to each other.

The imagery of one of Bahu’s universally loved stanzas is inspired by botanical world which is inseparably linked with soil and agriculture.

“My preceptor planted Allah, the jasmine seedling, in my heart/ positives and negatives watered it, filling each of my vessels / inside me the shrub is all fragrance and my soul is about to blossom…”.

Article continues after ad

Sultan Bahu lived closed to the river Chenab, the most romantic and talked about river of Punjab in cultural history and literature. Three of the most celebrated heroines (Heer, Sohni and Sahiban) of classical literature have been daughters of the river Chenab. Bahu’s deeply haunting stanza is inspired by the river and the activities associated with it.

“The heart, a river, deeper than ocean/ who can decipher its secrets?/ It has within it the fleet, the storm, the oars and the sailors/ inside it stand exposed all the realms like stretched tents/ Only a knower of the heart would recognize the signs”. And this was centuries before Freud and Jung came on the scene to solve the enigma of calm and stirrings at subterranean level now generally known as the unconscious and the subconscious. Metaphors and images of clay lamp, dust storm and horse in his poetry have organic links with the material life of Bahu’s times. Look at the suggestive power of metaphor drawn from animal world existing in midst of rural society: “The worn-out girth would not make the Arabian horse inconspicuous”.

Now let’s have a look at a poet who lived most of his life during the colonial period in the nineteenth century. Khwaja Ghulam Farid (1845-1901) was born in Chachran, a small town in Rahim Yar Khan district, located on the eastern bank of the river Indus. He was named after Baba Farid, the patriarch of Chishti Sufi Order in Punjab. He lived a longer part of his life in Bahawalpur, the capital city of princely state of Bahawalpur. After the death of his brother, he assumed the role of a spiritual guide for the ruler of the state. Looking at his poetry one feels that he was neither fascinated by the mighty Indus nor enamoured of city life. We rarely encounter in his poetry images or metaphors inspired by the river or urban living which anyway don’t negate the proposition that material conditions influence creative expression in a significant manner. Exception in fact proves the rule.

Khwaja Farid, though indifferent to the mysterious noise of flowing waters and hidden attraction of city dwelling, was passionately in love with the Rohi desert (aka Cholistan desert) that forms infinite horizon of Bahawalpur. His stints in the desert spread over fourteen years. The desert with its nomads, roaming herds, rain pools, birds, wild life, and flora and fauna haunted him with their mysteries. What fascinated him most was the ever-changing landscape of the desert due to the bewildering changes caused by winds, throbbing silence, shades of day light and the dark, and changes in seasons. The Rohi desert till this day is a vivid process of destruction and regeneration, death and rebirth. Khwaja Farid, in fact, paints the landscape which stands out as a vast image that rises at times to the level of a composite metaphor. The sand dunes in his verses, to borrow a phrase from the Austrian poet Rilke, breathe like ‘statues of silence’. “The Rohi, desolate and full of awe, has bewitched my crazed heart,” he admits with a subdued sense of pleasure. Now let’s see how he celebrates rain:“The monsoon is upon the Rohi desert/ turn your camel back now/ colourful lightening lightens the horizon/ the raindrops trickle down/ all the good omens are there for the lovers’ rendezvous/ the grey and dark clouds hover overhead with their torrential outpouring/ the dunes and strips are wet and ponds overflow/ the herders drive their herds with their joyful songs/ gusts of Eastern wind hold you spellbound and the cool of the showers soothes you/ the songbirds, full of pathos twitter…”.