The night the last full Heer was sung in a village in Jaranwala, the moon was so bright that old men swore Ranjha himself had returned to listen.

Three brothers — Ghulam Haider, Allah Ditta and Mohammad Bakhsh — all past 90, sat on a cracked mud platform beneath a single bulb. They began after maghrib [sunset] and finished only at the fajr azaan [call to prayer at dawn]. That night, they moved through the old qissay [tales] — Heer Ranjha, Mirza Sahiban and others — without missing a single couplet. Twelve unbroken hours, thousands of couplets, not one repeated. When Sahiban begged Mirza to shoot her first, even the village dogs fell silent. The youngest listener was 63. No child was present.

That was 2003. Today, the platform sells motorcycle parts, the bulb is gone and the brothers rest in the village graveyard.

A THOUSAND YEARS IN MEMORY

For a thousand years, the memory of Punjab lived in breath and melody rather than ink. From the salt hills of Soon Valley to the barley fields of Sargodha, every village once kept its history inside the heads and hearts of its mirasis [musicians], qissakhwaan and dastaangos [bards and storytellers].

Their stage was the dera [gathering place] or chaupaal [pavilion] under a peepal tree or outside the village mosque, where men gathered on charpais [woven jute beds] after evening prayer. In the parallel women’s spaces — the aangan [courtyard], the chhapparr [thatched hut], the rooftop terraces — grandmothers ruled the night with the same authority as queens.

For a thousand years, Punjab kept its history in song, not script. Now, fewer than a dozen people can still perform the epic tales that once filled every village square. This is the story of what we’re losing, and the unexpected voices trying to save it…

The great lok dastaans [folk tales] were the pillars of this living library: Heer Ranjha (dozens of oral versions long before Waris Shah put pen to paper), Sassi Punnu (originally a Sindhi and Balochi legend, later adapted to Punjabi oral tradition), Mirza Sahiban, Sohni Mahiwal, Puran Bhagat, Dulla Bhatti, Kaulan Rasalu and countless local........

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