Author Sarbpreet Singh who was recently in the city to launch his latest book The Sufi’s Nightingale, was joined by Chiranjiv Singh, former Ambassador of India to UNESCO and archivist Soni Wadhwa, at the Bangalore International Centre. Together, they explored various facets of the book, and most notably its focus on love, devotion and the divine.
Shah Hussain was a Sufi poet who lived in Lahore during the reign of Akbar. He was also a well-established Muslim scholar whose discourses were highly sought after. After an epiphany, he embraced the life of a malamati, or one who believes that by courting contempt, one rose above temptation and reached an enlightened spiritual state. His behaviour and that of his followers were deemed scandalous until the miracles associated with them began to take place.
One day, Shah Hussain saw a high born boy called Madho Lal and fell irrevocably in love with him. Theirs was a love which transcended all labels or distinctions and eventually he came to be known as Madho Lal Hussain.
This was in the late 1500s and their love story has passed into the annals of history. Many miracles are associated with Shah Hussain and while he may not be well known in South India, his shrine is still the focal point of the Mela Chiraghan or Festival of Lights, the biggest festival in Punjab, and is venerated by Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus alike.[
Emperor Jehangir had asked for a record to be made of Shah Hussain’s teachings and though that record has now been lost to time, the teachings were passed on word of mouth, becoming an intrinsic part of common knowledge in Punjab.
The Sufi’s Nightingale by author Sarbpreet Singh | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
According to Sarbpreet Singh, the lack of recorded history on the life of this Sufi saint, led him to pen The Sufi’s Nightingale as a work of fictionalised history. However, he admits to drawing heavily on lore and his own experiences in his quest to learn more about the mystic. Selected excerpts:
Soni: What role does research and history play in works like these?
Sarbpreet: When we write history, who we read and what our perspective is, is fundamentally important. Though this is a work of fiction, it is deeply researched. I don’t ignore Western scholarship, but my goal has been to uncover traditional texts and Janamsakhis or birth stories built on Sikh oral tradition.
There are magnificent poetic writings, mostly in Braj Bhasha, that tell the story of the Sikh Gurus with great richness and imagination. Trying to access a lot of these sources by writing history or by extension, historical fiction is tremendously important to me.
My original impulse was to write a biography of Shah Hussain, but when I found recorded material for research was scanty, I decided to take what I discovered and use it as a skeleton, filling in the rest with my imagination. Throughout my journey, the one thing that was always in focus was this relationship between Shah and Madho and how it was interpreted by modern scholars. Every time I had a doubt, I would just go back to the kafis (classical form of Sufi poetry) and read them again. And that is the true essence of the love between Shah Hussain and the object of his affection.
There are people who will say, “This is not history”. Well, I’m not a historian, I’m a storyteller. So I’m happy to take those liberties and bring the richness of these sources to the reader.
The best books I’ve ever read are Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude and Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. Magic realism is something that’s very close to my heart and this subject gave me the opportunity to play with that.
Author Sarbpreet Singh | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Chiranjiv: Shah Hussain’s kafis are part of the fabric of Punjabi culture on both sides of the border. Their relationship was unique because they became one. Would you say that the lesson from their life is that nothing else matters except love as it is love that takes you to spiritual heights?
Sarbpreet: This book is about many things, But more than anything else, it’s about the transcendence of love, and the triumph of love. The poetry of Shah Hussain flows beautifully and one thing that comes through is the exquisite manner in which the pain of separation is expressed.
His kafis were written to be sung and the legend of Heer and Ranjha feature prominently in his work. As with a lot of devotional poetry from the Indian subcontinent, Shah wrote in the feminine voice representing the devotee, addressing the Divine as masculine. Hurdles in their love story have come to represent an oppressive society; that is how Shah Hussain structures a lot of his kafis.
Chiranjiv: In the book there is an incident where a devotee sings with his eyes closed and on opening them finds a ceremonial chadar draped on his shoulders and says, ”I felt the permission I had gone to seek had been granted to me”. What was your experience when you were writing the book?
Sarbpreet: In early 2020, I was in Lahore for a conference. From the start, the visit was filled with warmth and positivity — right from the immigration official to the people I met who knew nothing about me or my books. All they say about the welcoming nature of Pakistanis towards Indians is true, and it apparently holds good, when they visit our country too, which tells me that if the common people of India and Pakistan met more often, things would be very different between our countries.
On my last day in Lahore, just before I was going to visit the dargah of Shah Hussain, I was encouraged to go there with the intention of asking for permission to write about it. My experience there had me believe that permission had been granted and in the next three or four months, the book pretty much wrote itself.
Soni: There’s only one kind of story in the world — it’s either a love story or a devotional story and it’s amazing how both converge whenever we talk about how love is God and God is love. Isn’t every love story essentially the same?
Sarbpreet: What you’ve experienced in your life matters. If I had encountered Shah Hussain 25 years earlier, I don’t know how I would have reacted. There’s a lot of commonality that binds these stories together, but I do believe that our individual experiences are also tremendously important and they in great part influence how we approach these stories and how we engage with them.
Author Sarbpreet Singh in conversation with Chiranjiv Singh and Soni Wadhwa on his book The Sufi’s Nightingale | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Chiranjiv: A character in the book says, “Are not the joys of this life created by Allah as well. Why do you condemn them so? What use is all this knowledge and scholarship if our lives are joyless? Aren’t children are better off than us? They play without restraint while scholars like us feed our nafs (ego) by accumulating knowledge that we think makes us better than everyone else”. Would you say that this is the key to the character of Shah Hussain and Madho Lal?
Sarbpreet: Shah Hussain hailed from a socially disadvantaged Muslim family, and when he is quite young, through the blessing for a master he becomes an Islamic scholar. He’s destined for greatness and while immersed in studies, he has this epiphany when his master is explaining a particular verse from the Quran. He realises everything in the world is created by God and that’s the moment it is said he gave up his Islamic Studies, put on red robes, shaved off his beard, and is seen singing and dancing wantonly in the streets of Lahore, all sacrilegious for a man of god.
He embraced the path of the malawati — courting the contempt of the world because that’s the only way to keep your ego in check. Though his lifestyle seemed to embrace the frivolous, he is locked in a struggle with his ego which surfaces at unexpected times. Since he was a weaver by caste, a lot of his kafis use tropes from weaving.
Trying to translate poetry from one language to another is difficult. When it comes to spiritual poetry it becomes ten times more challenging. So I’ve tried to convey a little bit of the essence of the original in my translations, but I would urge those who can engage with the original to do so simply because it is not just beautiful, it’s luminous.
COMMents
SHARE