To the Bullah in my reader, a thousand salaams
And the Bullah in me, I bow again and again.
The kafi-styled Punjabi poems by the Sufi mystic poet and philosopher Bullah/Bulleh Shah (1680-1758) of Kasur (now in Pakistan), performed in both traditional and contemporary modes, continue to be immensely popular, particularly in the subcontinent. My first brush with his lyrics was as a teenager, belting out and swaying vigorously to disco queen Runa Laila’s rendering of Dama Dam Mast Qalandar (a famous qawwali composed by the 13th-century Sufi poet Amir Khusro in honour of the Sindhi Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, and later modified by Bullah Shah). We threw our arms in the air and danced with abandonment.
Among the many diverse translations of Bullah Shah’s Punjabi songs into English, one recently found its way to my home: The Book of Bullah by Manjul Bajaj (AMARYLLIS Publishers``). Unique to this translation is the artwork created for each lyric, often sharing the page with the verses. Beautifully augmenting the poetry, these illustrations by Donette Gomes provoke much contemplation too, as they support the words yet offer their own narrative trajectory. An elegant, subtle cover in soft colours invites the reader to enter, and the visual device of small footprints is deployed, to ‘walk’ and ‘wander’ with the reader like an intimate companion from page to page, beginning to end. The lyrics are deceptively simple but must be read several times to grasp the deeper meaning. Here is just one example:
I know only myself
Nothing other than the Self
Nothing greater than the Self
Who then is that I see watching me? [p. 5]
A renowned scholar of Persian and Arabic, Bullah Shah was an Islamic theologian before encountering his spiritual Master, Shah Inayat (1643-1728) of the Qadri Sufi order, in Lahore. That meeting was the turning point in his life. Bullah fell in love with his Master, whose presence and teachings opened the floodgates of his heart and soul to an altogether higher plane of consciousness. The songs he composed after this radical transformation of his being are suffused with intense adoration, desire and longing. However, differences arose between teacher and disciple, and Bullah was forced to return to Kasur where he lived for the rest of his days. The extreme agony of separation from his Master and incessant craving for reunion, passionately expressed in sensual and nuptial metaphors, recurs in song after song:
Let me merge in you
Make me one with you.
You are the one
Who awoke this love
Now hold my hand
And take me through [p. 83]
Don’t forsake Bullah now
His worship is true
Be with me
Till the veil is removed
And I have seen my bridegroom. [p. 85]
Yet Bullah’s lyrics are as powerfully universal and social as they are personal: he calls to people to abandon their fixations on temples, dargahs, scriptures, priests and rituals, and to come together as one human race, with Love as its common language. For example:
Look beyond this world's duality
There is a river there
where everyone swims
He is here, there, everywhere
The servant the master
Bullah, such is his game
He does everything
He does nothing.(p.221)
A simple truth ends the matter
Forget your calculations
Stay away from doubt
Dismiss thoughts of hell and heaven
Banish imaginary concerns
Truth enters a clear mind (p 183)
The Book of Bullah will be appreciated by all who love poetry and Sufi philosophy. Bullah Shah’s potent, timeless celebration of the Divine has taken a fresh stride into the contemporary through the adept collaboration of translator and illustrator.
To the readers of this review, a million salutes. May Bullah touch your lives too.
Title: The Book of Bulla
Author: Manjul Bajaj
Publisher: Amaryllis An imprint of Manjul Publishing House Pvt. Ltd. Noida www.manjulindia.com
Pages: 234
About the Author: Manjul Bajaj writes novels, short stories, children’s fiction and poetry. Several of her works have been shortlisted for literary awards and prizes. She lives in Goa.
Note: Thanks to my friend, Smriti Vohra, I am adding this short note for the reader, which is not part of Manjul Bajaj’s Book Of Bullah.
“As noted by scholar William C. Chittick (Sufism: A Beginner’s Guide, 2009), “From about the thirteenth century onwards, few themes play as important a role in Sufi teachings as love. Historians have commonly spoken of a gradual development of Sufism that began in a mysticism of asceticism and fear, slowly changes to an emphasis on love and devotion, and then turns to knowledge and gnosis. . . [of the] large numbers of authors who wrote on divine and human love, Ibn Arabi [d. 1240] and Rumi [d. 1273] can be considered the two greatest masters of the tradition. . . The Persianate world, from Turkey to India, looks back upon Rumi as the greatest spiritual poet of history, just as the whole Islamic world considers Ibn Arabi the greatest Sufi theoretician” (74, 76). For Sufis, God is the true beloved; and as “God created the world through love, so love produces the multiplicity that fills the universe” (79). In the words of Ibn Arabi: “None but God is loved in the existent things. It is He who is manifest within every beloved to the eye of the lover – and there is no existent thing that is not a lover. So, the cosmos is all lover and beloved, and all of it goes back to Him. . . no one worships anything without imagining divinity within it. . . No one loves anything but his own Creator, but he is veiled from Him by love for [. . .] everything loved in the world… God [is] hidden beyond the veil of forms” (82). And in the words of Rumi: “All the hopes, desires, loves, and affections that people have for different things – father, mother, friends, heavens, earth, gardens, palaces, sciences, deeds, food, drink – all these are desires for God, and these things are veiled. When people leave this world and see the Eternal King without these veils, then they will know that all these were veils and coverings and that the object of their desire was in reality that One Thing” (82).
For Sufis, true love “depends on discernment”; people with “faulty knowledge”, who think “that lightning is the sun”, are ever veiled in illusion (Chittick, 84). The theoretician-poet Bullah, in his critical register, calls upon to abandon our innumerable social and psychological “veils”, including caste prejudice, religious bigotry and embedded fixations on temples, dargahs, scriptures and rituals; he appeals to us to come together as one human race, with Love as its common language: “
