Sohni Mahiwal: The Shrine Of Defiant Love

Star-crossed lovers Sohni and Mahiwal are doomed to be apart even in their graves, but their undying love still inspires veneration.

- Reema Abbasi

She lies alone in stoic white granite, covered in red and orange traditional bandhinis, bequests of lovers who come to dress her as Mahiwal’s bride once their love conquers all. Even as graves, Sohni and Mahiwal are apart – some say it is for reasons of social sanction whereby they cannot lie in the same room; the more benevolent believe that they were buried where their bodies washed up.

Less revered than his beloved and unsung, Mahiwal is far from her – in a lonely tiled grave, in a small room. He is surrounded by the congested Sunaar Bazar of Shahdadpur.

The route to Sohni is beatific and ironic – we travel on a thin sliver of a path that cuts through placid silver sheets of water where even geese seldom flap and dip. And then, past a warren of pitted, narrow tracks edged with carts, stalls and shops, is an old graveyard surveyed by the lofty but reticent mausoleum of Sindh’s Mai Sutthi, and the world’s Sohni.

In the gentle evening sun, an old peepal tree casts a cool interplay of shadows on the unpolished marble platforms before the prime doorsill. The almost 400-year-old memorial wears a mantle of calm and grace, set between lore and truth.