Love Tales of Pakistan -I
The Story of Sohni and Mahiwal
Listening to music on YouTube, I came upon this soulful Seraiki song by Pathanay Khan, a Seraiki singer:
سوہنی گھڑے نوں آکھدی
اج میرا یار ملا گھڑیا
“Sohni begs her clay-pitcher:
please help me meet my lover tonight”
Even though I was vaguely familiar with the story of Sohni-Mahiwal, this sorrowful song made me research the story a bit. I discovered that, like many popular folktales, there are several versions of this story, but a common thread runs through all of them.
Sifting through different accounts — and glossing over some — here is what I gathered about this poignant story.
Sometime during the late Mughal period, there lived in a town on the banks of the Chenab River or one of its tributaries a potter, kumhar, named Tulla. (The town is identified either as present-day Gujrat, in Pakistan, or one of the nearby towns.) Tulla was a master craftsman and his customers came from throughout Northern India and also from caravans going from India to Central Asia.
The potter had a daughter named Sohni, meaning beautiful in Punjabi. Sohni spent her childhood playing in her father’s workshop and watching him going through the process of making pottery: kneading the clay, molding it on the potter’s wheel into pots and pitchers, drying them in the sun, and baking them in the fire.
Sohni grew up not only into a beautiful young woman but also skillful in making floral designs on the pottery that came off her father’s wheel.
Sohni’s town was located on the trading route between Delhi and Central Asia, and trading caravans often made a stopover there. One such caravan included a young, handsome trader from Bukhara, named Izzat Baig. While checking out the merchandise in town, Izzat Baig came upon Tulla’s workshop where he spotted Sohni sitting in a corner of the workshop painting floral designs on the pottery. Izzat Baig, struck by Sohni’s rustic beauty, couldn’t take his eyes off her. He lingered in the shop purchasing random pieces of pottery.
He turned up again the next day and made some more purchases. His purchases were a pretext to be around Sohni for as long as he could. This became Izzat Baig’s routine until he had squandered most of his money.
When the time came for his caravan to leave, Izzat Baig told his companions that they could leave and he would follow them later. He found a place to live in the town, and would often visit Tulla’s shop on one pretext or the other just to be around Sohni. Meanwhile, Sohni, feeling the heat of Izzat Baig’s love, also began to melt, and the two started meeting secretly.
Izzat Baig, when he ran out of money, started taking up odd jobs with different people including Sohni’s father. One such job was that of grazing people’s buffaloes, which earned him the name Mahiwal, a short variation of Majhan-wala in Punjabi or the buffalo-man. That name stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Sohni and Mahiwal’s clandestine meetings soon became the talk of the town. When Sohni’s father came to know of it, he hurriedly arranged Sohni’s marriage with one of her cousins, also a potter. Ignoring her protests and entreaties, the father bundled off Sohni to her new home away from her hometown.
Mahiwal was devastated. He left town and became a wanderer, searching for Sohni’s whereabouts. Eventually, he found her house and managed to meet her in the guise of a beggar, and gave her his new address — a hut across the river. Sohni’s husband, meanwhile, realizing that he could not win Sohni’s heart no matter what he did to please her, started spending more time away from home on business trips.
Taking advantage of her husband’s absence, Sohni started meeting Mahiwal regularly. She would swim across the river at night using a large empty water pitcher as a float (a common swimming aid used in the villages in Punjab even today), and swim back before the crack of dawn. On reaching her side of the river she would hide the pitcher in a bush, to be used for her next trip.
Sohni’s sister-in-law (her husband’s sister) came visiting one day and stayed with her for a few days. Suspecting something unusual about Sohni’s nocturnal movements, she started spying on her.
Following her one night, she saw Sohni take out the pitcher from under the bush, wade into the river, and swim across. Alarmed, she reported the matter to her mother (Sohni’s mother-in-law). Both mother and daughter, rather than informing Sohni’s husband, decided to get rid of Sohni. This, they believed, was the only way to save their family’s honor.
Knowing where Sohni kept the empty pitcher, the sister-in-law quietly took it out from the bush and replaced it with an unbaked pitcher.
When Sohni set out for her next nightly rendezvous, she retrieved the pitcher from the bush as always and entered the river. It was a stormy night and the river was in high flood. She soon discovered to her horror that the pitcher had begun to disintegrate. It was unbaked and hadn’t been through the firing process.
What shall she do now? Different thoughts rushed through Sohni’s mind. Abandon the trip? Or continue trying to swim without a pitcher — and drown? The song that prompted me to research the story captures her struggle in an imaginary dialogue between Sohni and the dissolving pitcher.
Roughly translated and paraphrased, it runs somewhat as follows:
Sohni (addressing the pitcher):
Please, O, please! Take me to my Mahiwal.
It’s dark, the river’s in flood
There is water all around me
How am I to reach my Mahiwal
If I keep going, I will surely drown
If I turn back
I’d be going back on my word
And let Mahiwal down
I beg you with folded hands,
Please help me meet my Mahiwal
You always did, please do it now, too
The pitcher answers:
I wish I, too, were fired like you are
In the fire of love. But I am not. Forgive me…
Hearing Sohni’s cries, Mahiwal, from the other side, jumped into the river to save her. He barely managed to reach Sohni, and as the story goes, their bodies were washed ashore and found the next day lying next to each other.
With their death, Sohni and Mahiwal entered the world of legend and lore. The “sinners” became saints and left behind a beautiful love story, and the Sohni’s clay pitcher became a metaphor signifying lovers’ determination to meet each other whatever the odds. Parveen Shakir used it in one of her beautiful couplets:
طوفاں ہے تو کیا غم ‘ ہمیں آواز تو دیجے
کیا بھول گئے آپ مرے کچے گھڑے وہ ؟
A rough translation would be:
What if there is a storm, just beckon me
Have you forgotten my attempts
To swim across with unfired pitchers?
Note: First published on ATP on Jan 8, 2007
