The fifth lamp

I found myself listening to the Wadali Brothers instead. They sang of another kind of kavach, for Jhuley Lal and Lal Shahbaz Qalandar are the patron saints of both Hindus and Muslims. Jhuley Lal or Udero Lal/Amar Lal/Lal Sain is said to have saved a large number of Sindhi Hindus from genocide at the hands of a local Shah, when Alauddin Khilji was sultan of Delhi. Jhuleylal is painted as a greybeard riding on the 8216;fruit of the Indus8217;, the famous river fish called 8216;palla8217; hilsa ilisha, like Ganga Maiyya on her crocodile. Shahbaz Qalandar was a long-lived personage 1177-1274. He was born Syed Muhammed Usman in Marwand, Iran, to a highborn princess and a father who became a dervish and embraced poverty. He learnt the entire Koran by the age of seven and at 20 became a Sufi of the Qalandaria order. In 1263 his wanderings fetched him to Multan where the locals begged him to settle but he travelled further to southern Sindh until he reached Sehwan, where he reportedly lived in a tree trunk outside town. Legend says that the fakirs of Sehwan sent him a bowl full of milk to hint that there was no room for another, and he sent it back with a flower floating on top.

The belief is that 8216;Lal Shabaz8217; got his name from his red robes and from turning into a falcon to rescue his friend Sheikh Farid Shakarganj from the gallows of fanatical mullahs. Hindus revere Shahbaz Qalandar as the reincarnation of Bhartrihari, the ascetic elder brother of just King Vikramaditya of Ujjain, whose era we follow as 8216;Vikram Samvat8217;. I8217;m told his grave has a stack of Korans on one side while the other has diyas and agarbattis. The song affirms the Sufi with the line: 8216;Char chiragh tere balan hamesha, panjwa main baalan8217;. Your shrine is always lit by four lamps, and the fifth is lit by me. Sindh has gone from 8216;India, that is Bharat8217;, but Shahbaz Qalandar stakes his claim on us through his song. Each time we hear it, we seem to light that fifth lamp.