"The Heer & ranjha "

Some stories never die; they are told again and again, from time to time, place to place, author to author. One such is the story of Heer and Ranjha. About six centuries old now, it was first narrated in verse by one Damodar Arora during the reign of Emperor Akbar. Damodar was a native of Jhang where the story is broadly based and he had heard it from one Raja Ram Khatri who is supposed to be an eyewitness to all that happened. Since then it has been narrated variously and in various languages, both in verse and prose. One of the most notable narratives came from Waris Shah in 1766, apart from several others in Sindhi, Haryanavi, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, and English. In Persian alone, there are as many as twenty versions of this story and in Urdu not less than fifteen.

Ranjha was the son of a landlord and lived in Takht Hazara by the river Chenab. Heer was the daughter of another prosperous person from Jhang. Both were young, both were beautiful and both were destined to fall in passionate love and suffer, as suffering has ever been the destiny of genuine lovers.

The young Ranjha did not have much of the worldly skills but he was a good shepherd and a fine flute player. After the death of his father, he was considered a burden on the family. His brothers ill-treat him and denied him proper share in ancestral land. In anger, he walked out of his home.

While at home