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s the Punjab rivers go on a rampage, one can easily imagine the landscape there must have been before the canal colonisation of the area transformed the entire ecosystem. Then, as a result of the partition of the Punjab and the division of waters, three eastern rivers were handed over to India for its exclusive use, becoming mere memories for the Pakistani Punjab. Today these are mere creeks, flowing with very little water borrowed from other rivers. It is as if the rivers have been kept on a respirator. Both Shalamar Bagh and the Jahangir’s Tomb complex were once accessed from the river.
As Sutlej waters raged and threatened Kasur, one thought of the last resting place of Bulleh Shah in the city. The shrine is now part of a sprawling town. In fact, there are hardly any villages left in the central Punjab in the traditional sense. The custodians of morality and faith had not allowed Bulleh Shah to be buried at the usual graveyard, so he was laid to rest outside the town. Gradually, this site became a shrine, assuming a character all its own, just beyond where the sanctimonious population lived.
In the vicinity once flowed the Sutlej, long forgotten as one of the mighty rivers that shaped the landscape and made it habitable for humans to settle and thrive.
Bulleh Shah’s formative years were spent in Uch, a great centre of learning. That area, too, is now threatened by the Sutlej and other rivers that converge there. One should not forget that Waris Shah also studied in Uch and that his ideas and sensibility were shaped by his mentors and the shifting trends of the times. He later went and wrote his Heer in Malka Hans, another town close to the Sutlej. He was buried in Jandiala Sher Khan, which today lies closer to the Ravi, another river largely forgotten, though it played a glorious part in the making of Lahore.
The river that once ensured life and fertility is now reduced to a debate over encroachment and urban flooding.
It is said that a devastating flood swept away the grave of Shah Hussain and carried it to the site where his tomb now stands in Baghbanpura, the venue of Mela Chiraghan in the month of Chet, which grew into the largest fair of the Punjab. Both Basant and Mela Chiraghan likely reached their full splendour during the reign of Ranjit Singh.
Baba Farid, the first great poet of Punjabi, lies buried in Ajodhan, later renamed Pakpattan, also on the banks of the Sutlej. It was a sorry sight to look across from the shrine and see the encroachments around it, with the dust bowl of a dry riverbed stretching on one side. These days, the surroundings must resemble the way they appeared some seven centuries ago.
Khawaja Ghulam Fareed rests in Kot Mithan. One hopes that the ravaging waters of the Indus do not irreparably damage the shrine. The shrine of Sultan Bahu, situated at the confluence of Rivers Jhelum and Chenab, must still resemble the sight it was when he was first buried there.
Khizri Darwaza in the Walled City of Lahore once served as a port for river transport, which remained a major mode of travel all the way to the Arabian Sea.
When water flowed into Badami Bagh at the height of the river flows a few days ago, the reaction was one of dread, coupled with anger at the inefficiency of the relevant authorities. The river that once ensured life and fertility is now reduced to a debate over encroachment and urban flooding.
The writer is a Lahore-based culture critic.