چل چھیا چھیا Chal Chhaiyya Chhaiyya — Walk On, Walk In the Shade

Whoever has the shade of love over their head will have paradise beneath their feet. Walk on, walk in the shade.

The whole song in two lines, before the song starts. Chhaiyya is the shade a tree throws, and the Sufi tradition has always used it for the shelter of divine love. Jannat underfoot is the guarantee the verse makes. The command that follows, chal, walk, turns the promise into a motion. Nobody in this song stands still.

چھاؤں chhaan

shade

جنت jannat

paradise

The shade of love over the head, walk on. The feet walking to paradise, walk on.

The vow is repeated with the grammar rearranged, as mantras are. Sar and paanv, head and foot, hold the whole body of the believer between the shade above and the paradise below. The body is literally the walk, and the walk is the prayer.

She is the beloved, and she is like a fragrance. Her speech is like Urdu. She is my evening, my night, my whole universe. That beloved of mine, saiyya saiyya.

The beloved is met through the two most evanescent things the tradition knows, a smell and a language. Khushbu because a fragrance is presence without body. Urdu because the language of poetry is also the language of love, and the compliment doubles back on the song itself: it is in Urdu that one can say this. Saaiyya is a call from the folk songs, an exclamation with no meaning and total meaning.

کائنات kaayanat

the universe, the whole of creation

زبان zubaan

the tongue; a language

Sometimes she shows herself off, covered in flowers, and if she is fragrant she will be spotted somewhere. Make her into a charm and wear her, so that meeting her is like meeting a verse of the Quran somewhere.

Gulposh is a bride wrapped in flowers, and the word is doing double work: the beloved is a bride, and the song is the wedding procession. Then the search turns itself into religion. A taaviz is an amulet worn against harm, usually a folded paper with a verse on it. Wearing the beloved as a taaviz makes her a protection, and meeting her by accident becomes meeting an aayat, a revealed verse, by accident. Every meeting is an answer to a prayer nobody has said aloud.

گلپوش gulposh

covered in flowers

اترانا itrana

to preen, to show oneself off

تعویذ taaviz

an amulet worn for protection

آیت aayat

a verse of the Quran

The beloved walks light as dew, and paradise walks beneath her feet. Branch by branch, leaf by leaf, I search the wind for her traces.

The verse does the search in the idiom of the hunt. The beloved is prey and paradise at once, a girl light as dew and the firdaus, the highest garden, moving under her steps. Then the lover is left with the two things that always escape: the wind, and a scent. He searches branch by branch and leaf by leaf, which is a gardener's search, not a hunter's. The whole verse is a gentle confession that she cannot be caught.

مثال misaal

a likeness, a comparison

اوس os

dew

فردوس firdaus

paradise

نشان nishaan

a trace, a mark left behind

I am the madman of her beauty. She is a deserter, changing like sun and shade. Her mischief changes colour, and I am the trader in colour and form.

The song's only turn toward comedy. Shaida is the lover consumed by love, the highest devotional station. Harjaai is a cheat who changes allegiance, and the rhyme sets the two against each other: the song's lover is constant and the beloved is not. Saudaai, a dealer in goods, makes the lover a trader who will buy any colour she sells. The devotion of the earlier verses survives the joke, which is exactly the point of telling it.

شیدائی shaidaayi

one madly devoted to someone

ہرجائی harjaayi

one who belongs everywhere and to nobody

شوخ shokh

playful, bold, mischievous

سودائی saudaai

one driven mad by an obsession