Love in Pakistan

Iqbal Bhai Chamak Patti wala was putting the finishing touches on the tram he decorated  in the style of the W11 bus of Karachi. Mick Douglas, who conceived the project for the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, asked him to name it.  His first thought was the name of his wife, Shama.  Then he decided upon Love Is Life. Pyaar zindagi hai.

Love is an obsession in Pakistan, a society where public displays of love are not accepted, yet every bus rickshaw song ghazal film TV drama is centred on love, where despite all efforts by zealous religious groups, red roses are quickly sold out on Valentine’s Day. Ironic in a country the world believes is violent.

Romance is considered the staple genre for young girls and overworked housewives the world over, but in Pakistan the men are equally obsessed.  I remember being intrigued by a turbaned, very macho, truck driver spending ages in the truck accessory shop deciding which set of lovebirds to buy for his dashboard. The most hardened of politicians will look misty eyed at a ghazal mehfil where every other verse is about love.

From Plato onwards, philosophers have conceded that love cannot be explained, it is conceptually irrational. Faizi wrote: “O intellect! You may have a thousand lives, But for now, remain silent. In love’s presence, stand up and pay respect.”

South Asia has not only been comfortable with the concept of love but the ancients theorized it as Shringara, one of nine rasas, and 96 Sanskrit words exist for different kinds of love from maternal  to erotic love. The spread of Arabic and Persian cultures, starting with the Ghaznavids in the 11^th century, added the concepts of  ‘ishq' ( intense passion) and 'muhabbat' ( love).

The English word love comes from lufu developed from the Sankrit lubhyati  which morphs into the Latin Libet and libido. In modern Arabic the gentler word hubb is used, and ishq is reserved for intense love deriving from ʿashqa, a clinging ivy.

Two things happened to the expression of love as Islamic culture mediated in South Asia: the Sufis took love as their main pathway to union with the Divine, adopting the Arabic and Persian Ishq – Mijazi ( wordly love )and Ishq e Haqiqi ( divine or true love). The second factor was the secularization of love by courtly life and sophisticated elite cultures, which gave rise to great poets, musicians and singers.  Poetry move away from heroic epics to the realm of love in both Marg (elite) and Desi ( folk) traditions.

Rather than a break, as Rachel Dwyer has noted in her essay , Kiss or tell? Declaring love In Hindi films, ancient and modern, folk and historical narrations of love are kept alive and relevant, revisited, renewed and refreshed, crossing languages and genres from poetry to novel and film.

Love in Urdu, Persian or Arabic literature is of necessity unrequited or unfulfilled. While in Sanskrit literature , desire must remain unfulfilled   to preserve the sneha or vital fluid that prevents power from being dissipated, in Muslim traditions, unrequited love or  tragic romance, are the only ways  love  can bypass religious and social taboos.  The Beloved is always unattainable, indifferent, cruel : “ham kaheñge hāl-e-dil aur aap farmāeñge kyā” ( I will pour out my heart and what will you say? Or an alternative interpretation -  you will say,what? Ghalib). The lover is wounded by the arrows of the Beloved’s eyes, crazed by desire, rejected by both the beloved and society. Love is an intoxicating madness or junoon, the lover circling the Beloved like a moth around a candle.

Love defines  cinema, decorated transport, poetry, qawwali, folk songs and novellas.  From Turbat to Malakand, from Umerkot to Faisalabad there are folk stories of  tragic lovers  Sassi Punnu, Heer Ranjha, Mirza Sahiban, Sohni Mahiwal, Umar Marvi, Adam Durkhanai,  Hani and Sheh Mureed. Equally inspiring are imported love stories, Laila Majnun, Shirin Farhad, Yusuf and Zulaikha and Romeo and Juliet.

The Taj Mahal, has become an iconic symbol of love , Umrao Jaan Ada, the penultimate courtesan, immortalized by Mirza Hadi Ruswa, a  symbol of another kind of beloved. Artists like Chughtai, Nagi, and Hajra Mansur depict the desired female. Love poetry abounds in the repertoire of ordinary people.  Even a  homeless street boy, Lahori, recited a poem he wrote for Ruby the girl who collects old rotis from the street: “anghuti pari hai bench pe uthati kyu nahin? Muhabbat karti ho mujh se batati kyun nahin?” (The rign is lying on the bench, why don’t you pick it up? You know you love me, so why don’t you admit it?)  

Shamsur Rahman Faruqi writes “Emotions distilled in a ghazal verse have long been one of the most powerful means of sentimental education in South Asia,” or as Sahir Ludhianvi says “ Ishq Insaan ko insaan banadeta hai” ( Love makes a person human) . Love is the one emotion shared by all classes and cultures, evoking  the eternal struggle between hope and despair. 

Muhabbat and ishq dwelt in extramarital frames and often with an unspecified gender. From the late 19C onwards the concept of Romance ending in marriage was introduced, mainly through the emergence of the novel. The visuality of film replaced the imagined Beloved, but also brought love into an interior space and along with music recordings and the novel, privatized the enjoyment of  love.   

In western societies where public violence is restrained, violent films and video games allow audiences a space to acknowledge this primal instinct without consequences.

In Pakistan where public and in many cases domestic expressions of love are not possible, cinema, art and literature similarly allow a space to evoke these emotions without consequences.

Durriya Kazi

October 5, 2017