Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai

Published on 14th February, 2021, in Mid-day. In the 16th Century, Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai wrote a set of love poems in Sindhi to express Sufi mysticism, metaphorically capturing the tension between love and law, head and heart. Each has a female protagonist, hailing from Northwest India, from Gujarat to Punjab, and from different social strata. Marvi is a peasant who is abducted by an aristocrat called Omar. He imprisons her for many days in his fortress, but she insists on marrying the man she is engaged to in her village. So, he lets her go, but the villagers accuse her of infidelity (as in ..