In the middle of the night, a dark, bent figure sits in a lone boat, which mildly sways over a vast and endless river. The yellow moon hangs low in the dark sky like a copper plate. A haunting silence has befallen his surroundings, the kind that eats at your heart and from which madmen are born, there is not even a ripple in the water. Somewhere in the distance, the voice of a bird's hoarse voice filled with yearning comes ripping apart the still frozen air every now and then.
A single tear escapes from his red, swollen eyes and falls into the infinite river.
A humming starts, slow and soft, and suddenly, each fibre of his being tears, and a fountain of grief and infinite love explodes from the midst of his chest and he sings:
Jaavo ni koi mor leyaavo....
"Someone please go and bring him back"
Ni mere naal gaya je larr ke
"He went after fighting with me"
Allah kare ajaave je sohnaaa
"If God wills and my beloved comes back"
Deyan jaan qadman vich tarrh ke...
"I will lay my soul at his feet"
Each night he would sit and sing a new stanza, it was not long before the powerful sadness that engulfed his voice evoked the dead memories of everything and everyone that surrounded him and his voice sang even when he was not present on the river.
That was how the legend of Challa tore through the waters of Ravi and Chenab and engulfed everyone in its melancholic madness, and everyone began to weep for their very own Challa and no one has forgotten the lonely fisherman on the banks of the Ravi who cried for his son till he ran out of tears and his voice disappeared
This is the image that my mind paints whenever I'm listening to the famous folk song "Challa" known to have originated from Sandal Bar, a small region that lies between the two mighty rivers, Ravi and Chenab both of which are known to have given birth to countless tales and love songs and have in themselves become metaphors in the works of many great poets.
This is how the story goes, for atleast 100 years or so:
Challa was the only and the most beloved son of a fisherman residing in Sandal Bar and accompanied his father wherever he went.
One day there was a storm and the fisherman insisted that he should go fishing alone. Challa being stubborn in his nature couldn't bear to see his old father go all alone into the river, so he insisted and fought that he let him go this time, the other fishermen also advised the old man to stay back and let the son go and thus he agreed.
He stood watching as his son went into the river, hours passed, night fell and morning came but there was no sign of the fisherman's Challa.
It has been said that the father kept standing on the bank for days and days in his delirium, chanting and shouting for his son. He ran miles and miles like a madman asking for Challa's whereabouts and there was only one painful conclusion to the tragedy which had shattered his world: Challa had drowned in the storm and was lost forever and so the woeful tale of Challa, the lost son came into being.
As the song is considered folk, so the story is shunned away by some as false which was just narrated by some traveller or singer but I'd like to believe in the story mainly because I like to think human beings are connected to each other by their pain but most of all by the neverending love in their hearts, a love that overflows their hearts on some nights and merges into the waters of Ravi in the form of a song that goes on to survive and reside in the hearts of many even after a century has passed.
Over the decades, the song has been sung by many, and countless versions of it have been created yet the essence remains the same, a lover longing for his beloved after losing him.
If you listen carefully, you can see the man trying to vainfully try every argument he can to bring his son back while adressing him, he pleads and he fights and then he can also be seen trying to make him feel shame and guilt due to the grief which his painful seperation has given him, just to somehow lure him into coming back.
Challa murr ke nai aaya
"Challa didn't return back"
Rona umraan da paaya
"Has given me grief for life"
Maleya des paraaya
" He has stuck to the foreign land"
Ho gall sun challeya dhola
"O listen to me my beloved Challa"
Ho kaa nu paaunaa en rolaa.
"Why do you make a fuss?" (In context to the fight about going alone into the river and being stubborn"
There is a lot for us to unravel as listeners and how we comprehend the song. The way we can relate the song to our unrequited loves, lovers sitting in foreign lands, immigrants and losing our loved ones to death.....or maybe we can say that we all have our own individual Challa's whom we can relate this song to....
The story sharply mirrors the grief of losing someone you love dearly to death. It also depcits the relation between life and death, as the father sits on a boat on the waters of the same river which swallowed his son and in which his son's body may still be lying, it showcases two paralell dimensions, this world and the hereafter and in the thin line between life and death, we all sit with our unrequited loves and unfinished stories....waiting.
But what I really do wish after each time I listen to this song, this metaphor for the beloved who is dead, is that 'shaala kadi kise da challa na vicchre...'
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