Opinion Delhi met Lahore when Farida Khanum sang a Daag Dehlvi ghazal

In a video that has surfaced on Instagram, 96-year-old Khanum sings, “Uzr aane mein bhi hai, aur bulaate bhi nahi/ Baees-e-tark-e mulaqat bataate bhi nahi (You hesitate to come and you do not call me either. Nor do you tell me the reason for ending our relationship)”. Ghazal maestro and friend Ghulam Ali accompanies her on the harmonium as she describes the tension between two lovers. Many Daag experts may also have a more spiritual interpretation of the poem. But the more I listen to these lines by the last great poet of the Mughal period, who lived and worked at the Red Fort, in Khanum’s ageing voice — carrying an intimacy that we associate with her famed rendition of ‘Aaj jaane ki zid na karo’ — the more it reminds me of the state of the two nations.

One thinks of the recent images and voices dominated by polarising rhetoric and conflict following the brutal Pahalgam terrorist attack in April, of the pain, fear and sadness the incident and its aftermath brought, of death and doom, of sharp speeches by political leaders, of the helplessness amid the ferocity of war.

In the present, this nazm, sung not very far away from the Wagah border, feels like a vestige of a shared cultural identity that continues to drift across, as if it knows how much we crave each other’s art, whatever the situation may be. We often do not acknowledge these acts of cultural diplomacy, which continue in the most difficult situations. Can Pakistan ever stop listening to Lata Mangeshkar? Even after they banned her songs this year? “I am not going to stop watching Shah Rukh Khan. How can we artists turn our faces away? Sadda sangeet saanjha hai (Our music is a shared heritage),” Khanum had told me in Amritsari Punjabi during an interview in 2010 when she had visited India for a concert and had sung ‘Laaj raakho kartaar’ in raag Nat Narayani, a raga documented in the Guru Granth Sahab.

Her reference was to the legacy of language, music, and poetry common to both nations. The issue is that some people on either side of the divide have trouble understanding this.

Khanum’s rendition is in raag Baageshri, a night raga which holds longing in its notes, and which she sings in her inherent khayal-style (improvisation through thought), feels like the truth we need in today’s times.

Somewhere in its repetitions is an Alzheimer’s-ridden Calcutta-born and Amritsar-raised Khanum, who has neither forgotten that tough alaap in the beginning nor Daag’s lines, continuing to endure quietly when diplomacy is faltering, cross-cultural films with actors from either side are being banned and artists criticised, where visas remain stuck and where common language and music is expected to stay in silos.

Amidst the growing clamour of viral content, this Instagram reel from Lahore made me pause for a few minutes and think of what one could lose. Like many other Indians who thanked Zulqarnain Farooq, a Lahore-based lawyer and music aficionado, for recording this, I also sent my gratitude to him. I ended the conversation on a note of hoping to be able to meet someday and listen to the gems his extensive music archive holds.

In all of the conversations, political and otherwise, which go on, Khanum returning to a ghazal she’s sung most of her life, at this time, is a reminder, perhaps inadvertent, of the power a poem and its rendition can hold. Of the yearning of many people on both sides of the border who appreciate and value each other’s cultural ideas, of those on either side of Punjab who often think about what Gurdas Maan once wrote: “Raavi toh Chenab puchhda, ki haal hai Satluj da? (Raavi often asks Chenab, how is Sutluj doing?),” — of paths that exist no more.

Closure may be far away. For now, we build through a song.

suanshu.khurana@expressindia.com