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legend Beary
tales from the jungle
legend Just a little
outside of the village of Kheiwa, in district Jhang, is the old graveyard of
the village. It is a small vacant ground on a mound, with a few ancient Waan
trees. Scattered all over the graveyard are broken pieces of bricks, charcoal
grey in colour, due to their burning. The only building that has
survived in the village is a historical mosque — a small yet
elaborately-designed structure, whose sanctity has been maintained over all
these years — given that its bricks and wood from doors and windows have
not been pillaged. But the mosque is now abandoned by devotees who would
rather visit their newly-constructed structures in their new village. This historical mosque was
once also a madrassah, where as legend has it the lovers Mirza and Sahiban
studied and fell in love. Given religious and social propriety, it is
appropriate that the mosque stands abandoned, a cut-off from the past that
the people of this village would rather forget. When the village of Kheiwa
was burned down by Mirza’s brothers to avenge the death of their brother,
only this mosque miraculously survived. The rest of the village was
decimated, and when a new village was established, the ruins of the older one
became a graveyard, and the scattered bricks a remnant of the past. About fifty kilometres from
Kheiwa, next to the bank of another river (Ravi) is the historical village of
Danabad, the village of Mirza. Here, lying outside of the village in
shambles, protected by an arbitrarily constructed wall without any roof, are
the graves of Mirza, Sahiban and his iconic horse Bakki. This physical
evidence of the love story between Mirza and Sahiban is considered to be an
inappropriate place to visit. The locals bar their womenfolk from visiting
this magical shrine — they believe they become susceptible to elopement.
Several women from their village have done so. Mirza Sahiban, considered
to be the last in the series of folk love legends of Punjab, when interpreted
in the framework of an agricultural and patriarchal society that Punjab was
at that time and still remains, is perhaps the most infamous one — a
blemish on the metaphysical concept of love that was between, let’s say,
Heer Ranjha. Unlike Mirza Sahiban, Heer
Ranjha’s love is considered to be an example of pure love, a manifestation
of the divine, taking on a religious dimension in Sufi literature. Their
shrine today in Jhang is a sacred space visited by devotees and lovers alike.
The shrine of Mirza and Sahiban has become a taboo on the other hand. This is
primarily due to the fact that Mirza and Sahiban’s love is considered
impure, carnal. For the orthodox guardians
of folk, their act of lust permanently brought an end to the era of lovers in
Punjab. There was to be no more Heer Ranjha or Sohni Mahinwal after how Mirza
and Sahiban loved. Falling short of these
divine standards of love and then becoming the cause of Mirza’s death,
Sahiban over the years has become a symbol of a weak lover, even unfaithful,
when compared to the larger than life Heer. While Mirza and Sahiban
were being chased by her brothers after eloping, Mirza having reached close
to his village, insisted they rest. Sahiban, caught between the loyalty
towards her beloved and her brothers, insisted they head on but in vain. When
Mirza slept, she placed his bow and arrows on the top of a Jand tree, so that
when her brothers approached them, he would not be able to harm them, which
he would have inevitably given his extraordinary skills with the bow and
arrow. Mirza died believing he was betrayed. Sahiban is belived to have been
taken back to Kheiwa and murdered by her brothers. This Jand tree, which has
been subject to numerous folk love poems and verses, stands a few kilometres
from Danabad. Slightly bent, as if by old age and the guilt of Mirza’s
death, the tree reluctantly lingers on to live through centuries. Its role in
the folk history of Punjab has made it a site of a unique pilgrimage of keen
folklorists. This is where Mirza Sahiban’s love story was brought to an end
or given a start and this is where they are buried. Despite the actual presence
of the mosque, the shrine and the tree, where the story unfolded, no one can
be certain if this folk love legend is actually true. This is also the case
with Heer Ranjha, where the shrines and the villages exist but there is no
historical evidence the couple actually existed. For Mirza Sahiban, however,
a few additional evidence points that there might be a Mirza and a Sahiban
and their doomed love story. The first and particularly important is the ruin
of the historical village of Kheiwa, burned down by the brothers of Mirza to
avenge his death. The fact there is a mound outside of the village having
buried within it the secrets of the lost society, one is left wondering if
the burning of the village was actually an act of Mirza’s brothers. The second tradition that
gives credence to the historicity of this folk story is a that the Sayyals (Sahiban’s
family) started practicing female infanticide after the murder of Sahiban.
They started doing so to avoid the birth of another Sahiban. This practice
was stopped by the British government as is noted in Sir Lepel Griffins’s
book The Punjab Chiefs. The book implies that the story is indeed true. However, having said that
one is left wondering how Sahiban’s body reached Danabad after her murder
at Kheiwa by her brothers. In this case, one could argue that Sahiban might
not be actually buried there and only symbolically. The truth cannot be
stated as a fact, given the nature of how this folk story has been handed
down to us over generations. But given the ruins at Kheiwa and the practice
of infanticide among the Sayyals, one cannot easily shun this story as
fiction. caption Mirza Sahiban’s grave.
— Photos by Sohail Abid caption The killer tree.
Beary
tales from the jungle My first serious
encounter with a bear was when one winter night Abbi, my father, read me a
real-life drama from Kenneth Anderson’s book. The story was about a rogue
black bear in a South Indian jungle which, in 1950s, single-handedly
mutilated and killed 12 people before being shot dead by this famous big game
hunter. I shuddered in my bed. The child in me could not comprehend the
disturbing thought — that the ‘Smokey Bear’ of my comics could be so
ferocious. Like all other pre-teen
children of my time, it was Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book’ which
introduced me to jungles of the subcontinent. Through Mowgli, I learnt about
the snake fighting mongoose, the social setup of a wolf pack, the hated
habits of hyena, the cunningness of the jackal, and the evil tiger
‘Sherkhan’ who wanted to kill my favourite man-cub. But Mowgli had some good
friends in the jungle. The foremost was the wolf
pack which nurtured and protected him as one of its own. ‘Bagheera’, the
Black Panther also cared about him, but it was the old ‘Baloo’ bear which
taught Mowgli the laws of the jungle. The most important ‘law of the
jungle’ was ‘it never ordains anything without a reason and it forbids
every beast to avoid killing a man’. Reading Kipling’s book
allowed me to enjoy rambling in wilderness without any fear of being attacked
by a beast. During my wanderings in
recent years in Gilgil-Baltistan, I found out that the people in Chilas (Diamer
District) consider bears their hated adversary. Their antagonism is based on
some ill-founded myths — like bears kill their livestock for food. Bears are not compulsive
meat-eaters. But are frugivorous, and climb trees to forage. They are fond of
mulberries, honey, potatoes and dig out roots. The man-bear conflict usually
occurs when bears, driven by hunger, raid apricot orchards in June or maize
crops in September for food. So, the black bears are killed by the villagers
for their depredations to crops. The easy availability of
firearms is an added factor leading to the extinction of this specie from the
valleys of Chilas. I visited some of the
valleys in my quest to save the black bears of Chilas. People in Dariel and
Thore Valleys told me bears were originally offsprings of men who were driven
into madness by their inability to pay their debts, and who took to the hills
to avoid their creditors. In Thurli Valley, 20 kms
short of Chilas, I learnt people still believe bears are the distorted form
of humans and sometimes they behave like pet animals. To substantiate this
claim, Badar Jamil, an old but sturdy Gujjar, narrated me another folklore.
“Long ago, at dusk an old woman saw a dark coloured animal lying outside
her cottage. Taking it to be her cow, she dragged it by its ear and had it
securely shut in the pen. Next morning it was found to be a bear.” Few Septembers ago when the
maize crop was ripe, this Gujjar, along with a relative, was walking along
the Thurli stream. In full moon, he saw a silhouette with pointed ears,
perched on the top of a Mulberry tree. He fired and something came crashing
down through the branches. “It cried like a baby,” he recalls. Another
shot by his companion silenced the three-month-old cub forever. In the later
part of the night, mama bear returned and in rage tore apart the tree. The
only thing left on it was sort of a nest where the baby bear was perched. Gottlieb Wilheln Leitner
(1841-1899), an Austro-Hungarian Orientalist and the first principal of the
Government College, Lahore was deputed in 1866 by the Punjab government on a
mission of linguistic inquiry to Kashmir and Chilas. He recorded an interesting
story of a bear and Ghalib Shah, a ‘one-eyed man’, who resided in a
village near Astor: One night he saw a bear hastily eating his crop. The man
got his gun and pointed it at the bear. The animal ran around the “blind
side of the man’s face”, snatched the gun from his hand and threw it
away. The bear and the man wrestled for a time, but both gave up struggle and
retired. The son of that man still lives at the village and tells this story. The fight between the bear
and the ‘one-eyed’ man ended in a draw. Legends are mostly made of
stuff with happy endings. Dramas in real-life are just the opposite. Take,
for instance, Furqan’s encounter with the bear. It was May 1994. After
spending a night in village Battian, about two hours walk from his home in
Thurli Valley, 17-year-old Furqan and his friend climbed a ridge in front of
the village at 9.00 in the morning to collect the bark of Timroo tree which
in folk wisdom cures jaundice. He almost stepped on a male bear which was
sleeping under a Timroo tree. He turned and fled, closely followed by the
bear. As Furqan glanced back to see his pursuer, he found a black bear with
white marks on his chest, standing on his hindquarters. The bear struck
Furqan with its front paws. Furqan’s friend heard his
screams and saw him and the bear ‘bear hugging’ each other. He fired in
the air so as not to harm Furqan, who by now was badly mauled, while the bear
hearing the shots started running. Furqan
coolly inquired from his distraught friend the whereabouts of the bear and on
knowing that it is moving up the slope, insisted that his friend should shoot
this marauder first. His friend fired three shots, missed all and then the
fourth shell got stuck up in the chamber. By now, totally blind, Furqan took
the gun from his friend, but was unable to dislodge the cartridge. He
collapsed. Furqan was carried to his
home on a charpoy, still bleeding. Luckily the SDO B&R Department was on
a routine inspection of Thurli Valley. Furqan was sped away in his jeep to
Chilas where he received his first medical help, 12 hours after the incident.
The same night he was shifted to DHQ hospital Gilgit. He was discharged after
22 days, but his life would never be the same again. He carries deep scars on
his scalp and face, and is blind in both eyes. Since then, no bear attack
has been reported in Diamir District. It is considered a shy, solitary
creature which gives right of way to humans. She-bears are known to show
aggressive behaviour while rearing cubs. Last year, a full-grown bear ran
passed an eight-year-old boy in Gais Bala Valley. No harm was caused to the
excited boy. The unprovoked aggression
in the case of Furqan is easier to explain in terms of Mowgli’s laws of the
jungle which says that “none of Jungle People (wild animals) like being
disturbed and all are ready to fly at an intruder”. Despite strict wildlife
laws against poaching in the country, the ruthless killing of wild animals
continues unabated. Baloo, the old bear, taught jungle laws to the man-cub
Mowgli: “Is there anything in the jungle too little to be killed? No. That
is why I teach you these things. Hunt for food, but not for pleasure.” The more I read Kipling’s
book in recent years, the more I am convinced we need to apply the jungle
laws as taught by ‘Baloo’ the bear on ourselves. The writer is a
conservationist and an animal right activist and can be reached at dr.raheal@gmail.com caption Furqan sitting outside his
home in Thurli Valley. caption Thurli valley in Autumn.
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