It wasn’t long before I arrived at the shrine – a stout, square building topped with an open dome and four small minarets, its walls decorated in a strange checkerboard pattern. Alone, I walked through the rows of simple tombs which I assumed belonged to locals. Surveying the desolate graveyard on the city limits, I figured it was a good idea.
#HEER RANJHA QAWALI FULL MP3 DRIVER#
Very soon the rickshaw driver stopped, and asked me if I wanted him to hang around for the trip back. I also wondered whether he might have been a bit confused, intimidated or even bewildered to meet a foreign traveller – tourists are not a common sight in Jhang, and on a subsequent trip to the Jhang area I was informed in one tiny village that I was “the first foreigner to come here”! Quite an honour (if it is indeed true), and a responsibility, too. My rickshaw driver was a friendly but serious fellow I got the feeling that he was probably quite hospitable, but life in the desert had taken its toll on him. Groups of women in black gowns held their chadors aloft to shield their faces from the harsh light. The rickshaw passed scores of locals at the roadside produce market, buying up fruit and vegetables, and scurrying from shelter to shelter, trying to avoid the heat of the sun’s mid-morning rays. The gentle but steady breeze swirled the dust across the road, even in the city centre. Western Punjab is a semi-desert landscape, and Jhang looked the part. The graveyard near the Heer Ranjha Shrine
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Once the commotion of the arriving bus had died down, I quietly approached a rickshaw driver on the side of the road, told him my destination and negotiated a price. Using my usual trick, I casually told them “ nahi“, then walked off on my own.
#HEER RANJHA QAWALI FULL MP3 DRIVERS#
I fell asleep almost straight away, and was woken as the bus jolted into the outskirts of our destination.ĭisembarking the bus, I was immediately accosted by about seven rickshaw drivers offering their services. The bus was full of the usual suspects – restless children crying in their mother’s arms, a handful of cheeky male students on their way back from the provincial capital for the weekend, a poor young woman who suffered from motion sickness from the moment the bus pulled out of the station, stern-looking turbaned religious types who made eye-contact with no-one, and a man with a long, straggly beard sitting on the aisle seat, his veiled wife safely cocooned between him and the window.
![heer ranjha qawali full mp3 heer ranjha qawali full mp3](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Ty5XHAVTVxE/0.jpg)
The trip to Jhang is just over three hours from Lahore. Knowing the only way he will ever be with her is in the afterlife, he consumes the remainder of her spiked food. Ranjha rushes to her aid but finds her in the final throes of death. Heer’s parents relent and seemingly allow her to marry Ranjha, but on the morning of the marriage she is served a poisoned meal – punishment for her behaviour. Ranjha leaves, heartbroken, but after a spiritual awakening he returns to take the lady he truly loves.
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![heer ranjha qawali full mp3 heer ranjha qawali full mp3](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/pyDUFMyHZgA/hqdefault.jpg)
The story goes that the beautiful young woman Heer fell in love with Ranjha, but was forced by her father to marry someone else. Pakistan is no exception, although the story of Heer and Ranjha is so entwined with the fabric of local tradition it’s difficult to know where reality ends and the story begins. A few years ago I watched the lavish cinema production of Ram Leela, a similar story from India Iran and the Arab world have Layla and Majnun, and everyone knows about Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Earlier this year I made a vlog about Japan’s Ohatsu Tenjin Shrine where two star-crossed lovers paid the ultimate price for their love. There is something about two people being so desperately in love with each other, yet unable to act upon their romance that strikes a chord with societies in almost every country I have spent a long amount of time in. One thing that I have come to realise as I’ve travelled around the world is the enduring popularity of tragic love stories.