Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu
Amrita Pritam's lament for the Partition, calling on Waris Shah to rise from his grave and see Punjab now.
In 1947 Amrita Pritam, a young poet from Lahore, fled with her family to India. On the train to Dehradun, watching the burning countryside, she wrote a poem addressed to Waris Shah, the poet of Heer. When one daughter of Punjab wept, she says, you wrote a whole epic; today a hundred thousand daughters weep, so rise from your grave and write a new page of the book of love.
The poem describes the Chenab running with blood, the poison sown in the fields, the spinning wheels silent and the swings broken. It names no religion as guilty; it mourns the Punjab as a whole. It spread by word of mouth across both new countries and was carried in the pockets of refugees.
It is still the most famous poem about the Partition in any language of the subcontinent. It has been sung by many, including Surinder Kaur, and recited at every anniversary of 1947 in Lahore and Amritsar alike.
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