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The locals knew of it always, way before the British engineers trying to lay the railroad through the soft sand of Sindh were led to it, to steal and reuse the 5000+ year old bricks from the Great Wall of Sindh, to stabilize the sand for 90 miles of railroad tracks to be laid on it. One of the major archeological sites of that ancient civilization, called Mohan-jo-Daro, is simply Sindhi for Mound-of-the-Dead. The richness of the culture is hinted at in the fact that India is named after a bastardization of Indus, the land of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. He is part of the rich Sufi tradition, that originated in Sindh.
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He is called by many other names, such as Lal Sai (because he wore red robes), Odero Lal (Flying one, as he traveled a lot), Zinda-Pir (Living Saint), Sheikh Tahir, Shahbaz Kalandar, amongst them. What I never knew was that Jhulelal is a poet who lived in the mid-tenth century. The typical Sindhi greeting ‘bedo paar’ literally means ‘may your boat land safely’. Sindhis have been global traders from the times when rivers were the highways and boats were planes. That seemed fitting for a people named after the river Sindhu, called Indus in English, that flows through Sindh. With curiosity aroused and information a few clicks away, I discovered so much about the land of my ancestors and Sindhi culture that I might never have otherwise.įor example, I always knew that we Sindhis worship Jhulelal, the river god, who is depicted sitting on a fish. A classic book of his poems, Latif-jo-Rassolo, was published in 1866, almost 100 years after he passed away. It is written in the Arabic script and growing up in Delhi, there was no access to learning it in school or elsewhere.Īs I sang the pallo, one of the poets in our circle, who reads extensively in Urdu, another language written in Arabic script, told me about Shah Latif, the best-known poet of Sindh. Most of my cousins can’t even speak it, and I never learned to read or write it. With her passing the reality of Sindhi as a dying language hits home personally. My mother was the only person I could speak in Sindhi with. The partition destroyed the rich cultural and literary heritage of Sindhis as we became displaced people. Their generation assimilated by adopting the local languages and customs, and by inter-marrying people of different faiths and languages. My parents were about ten years old as they became child refugees in India. The majority of them are Muslims as the Hindu Sindhis, like all four of my grandparents, migrated to India in 1947, due to the partition of the country. Sindhi is spoken mostly by Sindhis living in Sindh, Pakistan. The ‘ pallo ’ starts with…įor your blessings, the rich and the poor
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We call it pallo as we sing it while holding open a scarf or end of a saree or hands open in front of the body, in supplication. It is an aarti, sung at the end of most prayer rituals in Sindhi households.
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My grief was expressed in the poetry circle as I sang an old Sindhi prayer that I first heard as a child from my grandmother. My maasi’s daughter and her son, and their spouses, took care of the last rites. Due to COVID restrictions, the hospitals were no longer accepting cadavers. The strong independent woman she was, she had made plans for her mortal remains to be donated to the local hospital for the cause of science. As an only child, it was especially hard to not be near her as she bid farewell to this life. In July 2020, I suffered a personal tragedy, as my mother passed away in India. Thanks to the patient listening and open minds, we have grown closer and our personal experiences are also shared through the poems we read. We have read poems to process the major public tragedies in these unusual times, be it the pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and protests in its aftermath, California’s largest wildfires with darkness at noon over San Francisco and ash raining down from the skies, India’s major floods and the largest migration of daily workers who walked from all major Indian cities to their villages, the very divisive presidential election with the prolonged wait for the results, to the history-making Biden-Harris team winning the White House from Trump, and beyond. We read poems in different languages, with impromptu translations, to find shelter in poems. It has proven to be a sanctuary for us regulars. Poetry As Sanctuary – A column where we explore poetry as a means of expression for voices of the South Asian Diaspora.įor five years now, I have hosted monthly poetry readings in my living room, which, starting in March 2020, with the onset of the pandemic, transitioned to weekly online meetings by popular request.