Bulla Ki Jaana
Bulleh Shah's kafi of who I am not, turned into a rock song that became India's anthem of 2005.
Bulleh Shah's kafi asks who he is, and answers with a long list of what he is not: not a believer in the mosque, not an unbeliever; not a Hindu or a Muslim; not of Moses or of Pharaoh; not of water or of earth, fire or air. 'Bulla, what do I know of who I am?' is the refrain. It is the clearest statement of the Sufi refusal of every label.
Sung for centuries at Sufi shrines, it was recorded in 2004 by Rabbi Shergill, a young Sikh singer from Delhi, with a guitar and a rock band. The song became a surprise hit across India in 2005, played in clubs and cars far beyond the Punjabi world, and its video of the turbaned Rabbi singing an eighteenth-century Muslim mystic's words became a symbol of a shared Punjabi heritage.
Bulleh Shah's verses, written in Kasur in the years of the Mughal collapse, have proved to be the most portable poetry the Punjab has ever produced.
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